From your friends at ATCMonitor.com.  © 2006 - Reproduction without permission is prohibited. THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF ATC The United States has gone through a long evolution of air traffic control, since the days of using bonfires and flags to direct traffic.  With the introduction of radar, air traffic controllers were provided with information to make their jobs easier, and ensure safety.  As you have seen, the air traffic control system and all of its players are part of an intricate network.  If you had read a popular science magazine 60 years ago, you would've been reading articles that predicted the use of oxygen for flying above weather, or you might have read an article about scientists testing radio signals that could warn pilots of obstacles and mountains in their direct line of flight. Today we call that radar, and we fly above everything. So you might be wondering, can we predict the next 60 years of air traffic control?  Or even the next 10 years?  The FAA seems to think so, because they have a plan to revise the current air traffic control system in order to handle more aircraft.  It won't be long before the sky will be filled with commercial space aircraft and more on-demand air taxi services.  The current system in place won't be able to handle the increase in air traffic without some changes being made. For example, the United States population of commercial air carriers and regional or commuter air carriers transported over 640 million passengers in 2003. Some industry experts have advised that this number will reach over 1 billion passengers per year between now and the year 2015. Predictions of the future are clearer today than they were 60 years ago.  In fact, the move of the future for air traffic management seems to cover a broad range of ideas.  For example, some control centers are using software today that can predict air traffic conflicts 20 minutes in advance.  Other examples include the use of glass cockpits with moving maps that display color formatted weather, data link messages that appear on screen to reduce the chatter of control-to-pilot communications, and satellite navigation enhancements.  In fact, it's very possible that 10 years from now we may see all of this available to aviators, private and commercial alike.  To learn more about Air Traffic Control or how to become a part of the aviation industry, visit; http://www.natca.org, or http://www.faa.gov. back -- back to beginning of this article