The US air traffic management should be privatized to help speed up the employment of new technologies for the air transportation system, IATA’s director general has said. Called NextGen, the overhaul of ATM will take 10 years longer than its initial goal of 2025 and cost two or three times more than the initial estimated $40 billion in public-private investment, Airlines International reported. “It is very clear to me that we cannot keep up with this demand under our present system of air traffic management. Inefficiencies in ATM infrastructure impose a heavy toll on the global economy and they will only get worse,” Tony Tyler said. There has been more than 20 years of debate in the US about having a private company run the ATM, and in the meantime nations such as Britain have already done just that. Tyler added, “We support legislation to modernize the system through the creation of an independent, corporatized non-profit entity to perform these services.” Domestic traffic in the United States is expected to grow by 80% to 808 million in 2034, and total traffic to, from and within the US by 83% to more than 1.1 billion passenger journeys a year.
