National Airspace System

Free Flight Tools Show Promise, but Implementation Challenges Remain Gao ID: GAO-01-932 August 31, 2001

This report reviews the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) progress on implementing the Free Flight Program, which would provide more flexibility in air traffic operations. This program would increase collaboration between FAA and the aviation community. By using a set of new automated technologies (tools) and procedures, free flight is intended to increase the capacity and efficiency of the nation's airspace system while helping to minimize delays. GAO found that the scheduled March 2002 date will be too early for FAA to make an informed investment decision about moving to phase 2 of its Free Flight Program because of significant technical and operational issues. Furthermore, FAA's schedule for deploying these tools will not allow enough time to collect enough data to fully analyze their expected benefits. Currently, FAA lacks enough data to demonstrate that these tools can be relied upon to provide accurate data.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.