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Is air travel about to get better?

November 21, 2011 | Online Travel

The improvements coming to air travel amount to a long-awaited application of new thinking and new technology to a complex system that has been slow to accommodate change. Experts are seeing a different kind of future come into view - one in which we trade gleaming mystique and elegance for something that actually serves the needs of an increasingly airborne society.

Some of the advances that specialists have been working on are in the realm of gadgets: boarding passes delivered to your cellphone, location-aware luggage that can be tracked in real time. Others have to do with procedure: new and better ways for passengers to board a plane, or an algorithm that can reassign planes to new gates when delays cause backups in the terminal. But there is also something more profound afoot — something that will usher in a paradigm shift in the way the whole system works. People in the air transport industry call this game-changing thing “NextGen.” At its heart is a new navigation and surveillance system that will free American pilots and air traffic controllers from the outdated radar technology they’ve been relying on since the 1950s, and will make it possible for airlines to reduce the delays and uncertainties that passengers have come to take for granted.

The improvements coming to air travel amount to a long-awaited application of new thinking and new technology to a complex system that has been slow to accommodate change. And though it’s unlikely air travel will ever again carry the aura it once did, or allow us to hop from rooftop to rooftop with the ease and speed that we once imagined, it’s possible we are seeing a different kind of future come into view — one in which we trade gleaming mystique and elegance for something that actually serves the needs of an increasingly airborne society.

Get the full story at The Boston Globe

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