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AIRLINE pilots in the US could be plotting their own flight paths if plans by
NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to make air travel more efficient
get the go-ahead. But pilots may have to alter their air etiquette near major
airports or else the scheme could increase confusion in these crowded zones.

Pilots currently follow set routes between destinations that are tightly
defined by air traffic controllers. But the FAA believes that devolving route
planning to pilots鈥攁 system called Free Flight鈥攃ould cut congestion
over airports and thereby journey times.

To investigate whether the scheme could work, NASA funded defence contractor
Raytheon of Lexington, Massachusetts, to build a simulator. It can be used to
check what happens when pilots plot different routes to destinations and react
in different ways to information from air traffic controllers.

Now, Phil Goetz, senior scientist at Intelligent Automation Incorporated of
Rockville, Maryland, who works on the simulator for Raytheon, has tested a model
designed to see what happens when pilots try to avoid traffic jams during Free
Flight. The model was created by researchers at XEROX Palo Alto Research Center
in California.

Goetz found that if planes approaching air traffic hotspots such as busy
airports tried to amend their routes whenever they got an updated traffic
report, they were more likely to get in each other鈥檚 way. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like when you
try to pass someone in the street and you both step from left to right at the
same time and can鈥檛 get past,鈥� explains Goetz.

By running further tests on the simulator, Goetz found he could reduce the
confusion by getting pilots in the simulation to ignore warnings about traffic
jams and assume the way would be clear by the time they arrived at their
destination.