Costs Outweigh The Benefits

The FAA's signature air traffic system upgrade is failing to gain altitude. An audit by the Transportation Department's inspector general finds, the public costs now outweigh the benefits by nearly $600 million. The IG looked into the satellite navigation portion of what the FAA calls the Next Generation Air Transportation System. FAA has completed 624 towers of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADSB. But few airlines are using it, and the IG says full use is likely to be years away. That's because of incomplete requirements and the cost associated with re-equipping planes. ADSB will eventually let aircraft navigate by GPS instead of ground-based radar.