Air Traffic Organization

Communications Services uses all types of media to keep ATO employees, Congress, and the aviation industry well-informed about developments in the organization.

Their management has helped the ATO establish credibility with Congress[citation needed] and enabled the performance-based organization to deliver services to customers more efficiently.

[4] A few months later, Congress passed enabling legislation which laid the foundation for the creation of a performance-based organization to manage the national airspace system, and the hiring of a chief operating officer to lead it.

Implementation began in 2003 and Russell Chew, a former American Airlines pilot and system operations manager, was hired in August.

FAA Deputy Administrator Bobby Sturgell was appointed to serve as acting chief operating officer of the ATO during a search for a replacement.

These employees research, plan, and build air traffic control equipment and programs; manage payroll and benefits programs; provide procurement service for both the ATO and the FAA at large; maintain relationships with the aviation industry and the general public; and ensure that the environment and ATO employees are protected.

The facility, located in northern Virginia, coordinates all air traffic movement, both civil and military, in domestic and oceanic airspace.

Decisions are carried out in cooperation with airline personnel, traffic management specialists and controllers at affected facilities.

Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) The airspace over the U.S. is divided into 21 large areas (20 are in the contiguous U.S. plus Alaska).

Recently, TRACONs in major metropolitan areas have been consolidated to handle many busy airports from a single facility.

Technical Center programs include testing and evaluation in air traffic control, communications, navigation, airports, aircraft safety, and security.

The Aeronautical Center also houses the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, which is involved in such diverse aviation matters as drop-down oxygen masks, emergency lighting, water evacuation plans and crash tests; the FAA Logistics Center, which offers repair and technical support for air traffic control equipment and aircraft for the U.S. and 44 other countries; the Transportation Safety Institute, which examines aviation safety; and the Civil Aviation Registry, which records every privately owned U.S. plane and licensed pilot.

NextGen is a wide-ranging transformation of the entire national air transportation system – not just certain pieces of it – to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky and at airports.

State-of-the-art technology, new procedures, and new airport infrastructure will allow the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to safely handle dramatic increases in the number and type of aircraft, without being overwhelmed by congestion.

The FAA provides air traffic control services, handling about 55,000 flights per day, and serving over 700 million passengers a year.

JPDO includes the U.S. Department of Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce; the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Map of approximately the Northern Hemisphere from Japan & New Guinea (left edge) to middle of North Atlantic Ocean. The map shows yellow over the continental US and Bahamas, Alaska (and much of the Bering Sea), and a yellow circle around Bermuda. Most of the Northern Pacific is colored blue along with a small section in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and the western half of the North Atlantic from roughly the latitude of Maine to the northern edge of the Leeward Islands (or Puerto Rico). — The FAA provides air traffic control services over US territory as well as over international waters where it has been delegated such authority by the ICAO . This map depicts overflight fee regions. The yellow regions are where the U.S. provides *enroute* ATC services over what is mostly land territory, excluding Hawaii and some island territories but including most of the Bering Sea as well as Bermuda and The Bahamas (sovereign countries, where the FAA provides high-altitude ATC service). The blue regions are where the US provides *oceanic* ATC services over international waters (Hawaii, some US island territories, & some small, foreign island nations /territories where the US provides high-altitude ATC service are included in this region).