Our air traffic controllers, weather experts, and innovators work 24/7 to improve your travel experience.
By Daniel Glover, FAA
This year airlines have been carrying the highest number of passengers since before the COVID-19 pandemic. As more people take to the air, the FAA is working 24/7 to get you to your destination safely and efficiently. Our teams quickly adapt to increases in air traffic, changes in traffic patterns and bad weather.
Here are five ways the FAA is working for you:
We choreograph safe aircraft movement.
Keeping airplanes safely separated is at the heart of air traffic control, and more than 14,000 highly trained air traffic professionals work at hundreds of FAA facilities to get an average of 45,000 daily flights where they are going. The largest facilities — major airport towers, radar facilities near airports, and en route centers for flights at high altitudes — manage traffic all day, every day.
We manage the National Airspace System as a whole.
As controllers separate aircraft, other experts in the FAA focus on the big picture. The teams at our Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia and at traffic management units located strategically around the country coordinate throughout the day and night. They develop severe weather avoidance plans (that’s why we call the summer “SWAP season”) for areas that are susceptible to bad weather, and they adjust traffic flow as necessary to balance air traffic demand with airspace capacity.
We collaborate with partners in government and industry.
National Weather Service (NWS) teams at our Command Center and 21 en route centers frequently update our experts on everything from pop-up thunderstorms to hurricanes. The airline industry also has representatives at the Command Center who work closely with us to plan for and adjust to changes in weather and airspace demand. The FAA, NWS and aviation community jointly develop collaborative aviation weather statements for major storms that could affect air traffic flow.
We make the most of modern technology.
In conjunction with the NWS, we recently deployed a weather-forecasting tool that produces down-to-the-minute predictions of how storms will affect arrival and departure routes at major airports. This new technology is one of many that help the FAA and our partners monitor weather in order to minimize delays. The FAA also uses tools to track aircraft on the ground and in the air to maximize efficiency. And we are researching how to use airplane technology to give weather updates to pilots and controllers.
We keep the flying public informed.
Follow us on Twitter @FAANews for our weekday air traffic report for major airports and our travel outlook video from the Command Center. To monitor overall delays at U.S. airports throughout the day, go to fly.faa.gov for real-time updates. You can also visit our summer travel page to learn more about how the FAA plans for busy travel times — and get tips to help you plan too. And remember to always check with your airline for your flight’s status.
Source: https://medium.com/faa/5-ways-the-faa-gets-you-where-youre-going-9323c3d5a1a8
