ol Advisory Committee. The committee's purpose was to examine future alternatives for the nation's airports and airways (Horne, "Dealing With The Feds" 87). On July 1, 1970, this effort eventually resulted in Congress passing the Airport and Airways Development and Revenue Act. The statute established the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Created from various excise taxes--i.e., a passenger ticket tax, the waybill tax, the fuel tax, and the international departure tax--the fund was designed to finance both airway improvement and airport construction and renovation (Ott 60). The original plan was to be carried out over a 10-year period and called for spending levels of no less than $250 million per year. It was superseded in 1981 by the National Airspace System Plan. The NASP's main goals are to consolidate facilities and replace old equipment with solid-state devices. This updated plan contains 150 new projects, of which several are considered "major." These include the Host computer, an automated weather observation system, and the advanced automation system (AAS) (Molinari 97). Hopefully, in time, ATC will consist of "a seamless web of position, flight plan, weather and other data flowing automatically back and forth between planes and with the ground (Cook 48)."
The National Airspace System Plan is the largest civilian technology project since Apollo. The FAA estimates that the complete plan will cost about $15.8 billion by the year 2000. However, the General Accounting Office claims that, if the renovation of old buildings is included, the NASP's total price could range upwards to over $24 billion ("The $18-billion" 51). However, the new system is also expected to result in substantial cost reductions. Perhaps the biggest savings will come from the streamlining of FAA operations. In total, 248 small control facilities will be combined into 23 regional centers. The new equipment should enable each controller to han...