[moffkalast]

The current systems seem to be all designed around there only being minimal air traffic, as it was in the past. People talking one on one with ATC, everything being done on a plane by plane basis. Can that really continue to function if traffic increases a few orders of magnitude?

I mean hell, imagine everyone having to ask the city car controller for permission to back their car out of their driveway, state their route and get for approval to drive all over the place without any regard for traffic and let the controller make sure there's nobody in your way.

[n_ermosh]

In the 70s when a lot of this system was designed, the industry was selling 10x the number of GA planes it does today, so I imagine 10x more were flying as well. So we have the capability for an order of magnitude increase. We'll need more controllers, sure.

But, you are totally right, we need to move away from voice based ATC to more digital systems that allow a management of more aircraft, and allow the GA aircraft to manage themselves through a "peer to peer" type ATC system, but like we have with our cars.

[FabHK]

> the industry was selling 10x the number of GA planes it does today, so I imagine 10x more were flying as well.

I'm pretty sure most of these planes from the 1970s are still merrily flying around!

The wikipedia article on the 1994 General Aviation Revitalization Act has a graph showing the astonishing drop in shipped aircraft (and the rise in unit cost!) since around 1980:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...

[n_ermosh]

yep--we want to reverse that trend. And you are probably right, a lot of those 70s planes still fly today. hopefully we can replace them with better alternatives

[drpixie]

Minimal traffic? An ATPL pilot here. Fly into any major airport and you'll see that it can be REALLY BUSY. The system is based around separation down to about 1 minute. Major airfields are all traffic limited (hence "slots").

1 minute might seem like a lot when you're walking or driving, but when coming in at 200mph in something that weights hundreds of tons ... I want that guy 1 minute ahead of me off the runway ;)

And that's considering that existing traffic is of similar speed and ability. Adding slow, small, low-performance aircraft to the mix makes things very interesting ;( Then add low-experience pilots who have to stop and think about procedures, actions, radio calls ...

permission to back their car out of their driveway - It might be different if those cars cost $100M-$300M. A tiny bingle is very expensive.

[moffkalast]

True I suppose, and it's not like we're on the verge of any new energy density tech that would make personal VTOLs viable either so runways might be the bottleneck that keeps throughput constrained for the foreseeable future I guess. Although you can always build more of them :)