by
Darryl Phillips
What is all this "free flight" stuff anyway? Articles about free flight are popping up everywhere. If you ask 15 pilots what free flight is, you'll get at least 16 answers.
In the May 1995 issue of FLYING, Richard L. Collins voiced a number of reservations about free flight in his column entitled "Free Flight is a Dream".
He asked if you could park as many cars if all the stripes were removed from the parking lot. My answer is no, you couldn't. But we don't paint the parking lot stripes five miles apart, only ATC requires spacing like that. To suggest that the lines would be removed and nothing would take their place is to ignore reality. Someday the parking lot lines may be laser stripes that dynamically change to accommodate differing needs. (For instance, we don't need stripes between cars that are already parked, and we need larger spaces for trucks.) Perhaps the lines will exist in some other electronic way. Pigment paint is not the only way to stripe the parking lot. And pigment ink is not the only way to chart the airways. The 1940s are half a century gone. We need to look to the future.
Next, Mr. Collins asked about traffic lights. If they were abolished would safety and efficiency improve? I believe the answer is no. We've all seen occasions when the traffic lights were out. It can snarl traffic. But wait a minute. Is a traffic light the equivalent of FAA's Air Traffic Control? No, it is much more akin to free flight, where there are rules of the road and electronic aids to help maintain smooth and efficient flow. Suppose every busy street corner had a tower and a radio frequency and a gaggle of federal employees. Would you prefer that to a traffic light, Richard?
The way we drive our cars is more similar to VFR than IFR. We don't wait for our trip plans to be blessed by the government. Most of the time we don't make plans at all, we just go. Even in the heaviest traffic we need talk to no one. Don't need to listen to anyone, either. If we change our minds and decide to take the scenic route we just do it. But that does not imply lawlessness or carelessness or a disregard for safety. It's called autonomy. It's called freedom.
Perhaps those who fly in the system all the time find it hard to understand what aviation freedom might mean. Autonomy can be frightening. There are those in prison who commit another crime immediately upon release because they cannot face the prospect of freedom. There are those in mental institutions who are terrified of choosing what color socks to put on. But for most of us, the idea of making our own choices and being responsible for the outcome is not frightening. It is what life is all about. It should be what aviation is all about.
Of course cars are not airplanes. Cars usually can't climb or descend to avoid the traffic. Neither can they arc through the city on a course where there is no pavement, or drive straight across the mountain range. And planes can't stop and wait for traffic to clear. They are different machines. But at a philosophical level they are very much the same. Each person can drive one car. Or fly one airplane. When we try to let one controller assure separation between a number of rapidly moving aircraft he can only do it by keeping them a long way apart. That would be equally true for cars. If a controller was responsible for minute-to-minute highway traffic he would be forced to reduce the quantity of vehicles to a number he could manage safely.
Next, he would have to allow for time to talk with each driver, and for the driver to acknowledge and understand and respond. That means more spacing between cars. Finally, he would have to allow for his antiquated radar that sometimes didn't show the traffic where it really was and rotated too slowly to keep up with the real-time situation. He could only compensate for each of these factors by spreading everyone out further, sending people where they really didn't want to go, and refusing to allow more vehicles into his area. Sound familiar?
Now take the opposite case. Put one driver in each vehicle. Give him the necessary information to do the job. Rules of the road would be established (and enforced) by people who drive cars of their own. Doesn't that sound like the better way to go?
Mankind has been using cars and planes for about the same length of time. We have plenty of experience with both. This idea of letting each driver be responsible for his own vehicle is not an unproven theory. It works. Freedom really is a better idea than government control.
Next time you drive your car, think of each decision you make. Stop sign. Traffic light. Left turn. Changing lanes. How would this all work if you had to get permission from a controller who was located far from the action, working with ancient equipment, and bound by a thick book of federal rules and procedures?
We know what free flight would be like. We drive it every day.
There is some slight indication that even the FAA is beginning to see the light. At the recent free flight symposium, Bill Jeffers of FAA Air Traffic Division stated that FAA now endorses the free flight concept. Of course endorsing the concept isn't the same as letting it happen, so we'll have to wait and see. But we should give credit where credit is due, and endorsing sure beats rejecting.
The airline industry is currently wasting over 5000 millions of dollars each year under the existing ATC system. That figure is from Michael Boyd, President of Aviation Systems Research Corp. United Airlines has cited a similar figure. Just think, that is close to 14 million dollars each and every day. Is this something our government should be doing to an industry that is in serious financial trouble and is so important to our national economy?
And it's not just the money. It's fuel burned that will never be available again, it's airframes worn out sooner, it's increased time aloft which directly equates to increased risk. Are you listening, Mr. Pena? If you want to achieve your goal of perfect safety, why are you keeping those airliners in the sky so long?
We know that General Aviation accounts for nearly twice as many flight hours as the airlines, so it follows that ATC is costing us untold millions more.
It's tempting to write about all the fancy electronic gadgets for the free flight cockpit of the future. Perhaps they will come. But the problem is not the microchip, it's the mindset. Until FAA is ready to treat us as customers we will not see free flight in any meaningful way. And FAA will not think of us as customers as long as they're thinking of us as subjects, as those that need governing. That's the problem with leaving ATC where it is now, a part of FAA, which is part of government. Governments govern, that's what they do for a living. As long as we have socialized Air Traffic Control we will not escape the socialized mindset.
Of course it's scary when the alphabet organizations quote those numbers of how much it would cost if ATC were privatized. They cite a "study" by the Reason foundation, not exactly a mainstream group. They know what the charge would be to talk with ground control, tower, center. They've determined what it would cost to request a weather briefing or tune in ATIS. If we were paying for the services AS THEY NOW EXIST, they're right. The bill for ATC would cost each plane an average of $51,000 a year. Few of us could afford that. But that is the point. If we were paying our money, we would be choosing what to buy and who to buy it from, just as we do when purchasing groceries or a car. We (and the airlines) would demand free flight because it would save us money, and a provider would emerge. It would no longer be socialism.
If we were purchasing the services on the open market, we would demand what we need. But we can't make any demands as long as we're on the receiving end of Aid for Dependent Pilots.