Sharp cost increases and delays in implementation are harming efforts to modernize the US air traffic control system, the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (IG) said in a report released on Tuesday.
At a time when air travel continues to grow, the Federal Aviation Administration has become focused on maintaining the system it already has, rather than increasing capacity through system enhancements, said the report.
Sixteen FAA projects such as new terminals for air traffic controllers and equipment to prevent runway accidents were examined and 11 were found to have grown by over USD$5.6 billion, pushing total current costs to about USD$14.5 billion.
Nine of the 16 projects had delays ranging from two to 12 years and two projects have been deferred.
Congress appropriated USD$2.5 billion for facilities and equipment funding for fiscal 2005 that ends September 30.
The two biggest cost increases and two of the bigger delays were in FAA projects led by Raytheon.
The cost of making the Global Positioning System fully usable for navigation and non-precision approaches, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), has grown 274 percent to USD$3.3 billion and is 12 years behind schedule, the IG's report said.
Another Raytheon program known by its acronym STARS, to replace controller workstations with color displays, has grown 194 percent to USD$2.8 billion and is seven years behind.
The report said the FAA needed to reassess the benefits and timing each project given the cost increases, the delays and cuts in congressional funding for equipment purchases.
If the expected benefits justified the project, then the cash flow requirements needed to be determined and Congress advised of future funding requirements, it said.
"... the crucial question is how FAA can address both capacity and affordability at the same time," Assistant Inspector General for Aviation and Special Program Audits, David Dobbs, wrote to FAA Administrator Marion Blakey.
The FAA said it agreed with the recommendations and was currently setting realistic cost and performance schedules. "We have made this effort a top priority for the FAA and its air traffic organization," said FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto.
The IG's report said it was still an open question whether the FAA would reduce its operating costs through WAAS because the agency had yet to determine which surface navigation aids would be replaced by WAAS and commercial airliners already had similar capabilities.
The IG's report said the cost of completing the STARS terminal modernization remains uncertain and there was urgent concern over the state of controllers' aging displays at large sites such as Chicago and Denver where replacement is not currently slated for several more years.
Responding to the report, Raytheon said budget reductions had delayed deployment of STARS but the company had performed on schedule and cost for the last six years, delivering 75 systems to the FAA and 39 to military air traffic controllers.
The company also predicted airliners, and not just general aviation aircraft, would gain advantages from WAAS through superior navigation from less expensive equipment.
