The airways over New York are about to get much more crowded, but in a good way. An upcoming overhaul of the way air traffic is controlled in and out of one of the busiest cities in the world will see its first major change in approximately ninety years. Changes include increased flight paths as well as the realization that planes can fly at different altitudes.
Some transportation authorities have made the claim that approximately 75% of all air traffic delay worldwide can be attributed to New York City, with hold-ups there cascading outward in a kind of compounding wave of delay. The root of this problem lies in that the state has severely limited flight paths that were originally based around the needs of small planes delivering mail in the 1920s. Since then, air traffic has increased astronomically. Also, flight paths across the state have been added, which has led to increasing inefficiency. The new plan, known as the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Airspace Redesign, throws out the existing map and starts anew; it is adding additional laneways to spread airplanes out while also integrating other airspace areas under a single jurisdiction.
The biggest change to the current system is the ability to have multiple planes using the same pathways; this was achieved thanks to the brilliant realization that planes fly and, therefore, can be separated by height in addition to horizontal planar distances. Of course, this is a great over-simplification of the entire decade-long development of the new plan. If you are interested, check out the official report on the Federal Aviation Administration website (faa.gov) or check out this article from Wired: http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/17-03/ff_airspace?currentPage=all
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