IBM’s Job: End Patchwork Air Traffic Control : New System Should Ease Controllers’ Task; Some Fear Cut in Work Force
One day in Cleveland in 1930, in the infancy of the air traffic control system, airport operators scrapped the checkered flags then used to route planes and replaced them with a radio-equipped control tower.
On Tuesday, federal aviation officials hailed another advance--the start of what they hope will be the latest technological breakthrough in the much-maligned traffic system, a multibillion-dollar computer overhaul aimed at helping controllers “manage” the skies by projecting traffic and weather conditions rather than simply reacting to near-collisions.
“This is a great day for the Department of Transportation,” Deputy Secretary Mimi Dawson said as she announced the awarding of a record-setting $3.6-billion contract for the project to International Business Machines, which beat out Hughes Aircraft for the award after an intense, four-year competition.
But some air traffic controllers and analysts warned that the new, automated traffic system would not compensate for what one official called “a gaping hole” in the government’s attention to personnel and management in the aviation system.
The computer contract, which covers the first phase of a project that could reach $10 billion by the time it is finished in a decade, is both the biggest ever given by the Transportation Department and the biggest ever received by IBM.
Federal aviation officials said the project laid a principal cornerstone in a broader, $16-billion revamping of the air system, which critics call antiquated, unreliable and overtaxed by a surging demand under airline deregulation.
Uniform System Planned
Calling the contract “a significant milestone and a historic step,” Federal Aviation Administrator T. Allan McArtor said at a news conference that the new automated computer system would make directing traffic easier for controllers and “will allow them to work smarter, not harder.”
Under its contract, IBM will replace the disjointed and often incompatible computer systems that controllers now use to track air traffic with a uniform system that transportation officials said will offer controllers far greater speed, communication and flexibility.
While controllers must now track flight plans on sheets of paper and at the same time keep track of a radar screen, the new system will automatically display and help sort all needed information--flight plans, altitude, position, weather hazards--on a large, color screen.
With the new system, controllers should be able to project traffic conditions by at least 20 minutes, compared to a four-minute jump they have now, said Leland Page, director of the project at the FAA.
“This automation system is a very important part of improving the air system,” said Edith Page, project director of a congressional Office of Technology Assessment study on air travel that is to be released today. “We’re now holding together the current system with great difficulty, and there’s a real potential for deterioration in safety. This change has to come.”
But she cautioned in an interview that no matter how sophisticated the system, the government’s “gaping hole” in air traffic personnel and management, which she said was widened by President Reagan’s 1981 firing of 11,000 striking controllers, “still needs attention.”
John Thornton, director of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., which replaced the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization after the 1981 strike as the bargaining unit for the group, said in an interview: “We’re glad to see that the award has gone to a reputable (company), one of national reputation, and hopefully they’ll be able to accomplish what they set out to do--make the controller’s job easier.”
IBM Plan Better, Cheaper
But he said that some controllers worried that an automated system would ultimately mean fewer jobs for them, even though traffic demand is expect to jump 35% by the end of the century and control centers are short-staffed already. Federal officials said they did not expect the new system to cut demand for controllers.
Dawson, who as deputy transportation secretary chose IBM over Hughes to win the new contract, said “both bids were extremely competent technically” but that IBM’s plan was better and cheaper. She refused to elaborate.
IBM plans to subcontract out about half its work on the project to Raytheon Co. of Lexington, Mass., Computer Sciences Crop. of Falls Church, Va., and several unidentified firms. Company officials expect to install their first test work center for the automated system in Atlantic City, N.J., in the fall of 1990, with the first operational use coming in Seattle in the spring of 1992 and widespread implementation in some 5,000 locations by 1995.
