But it is notoriously ill-suited to high-tech industries that have to tailor each item to a customer's specific needs (as in a data-switching centre or air-traffic-control system) or in which it is crucial that thousands of interrelated components all work correctly together (as in a rocket vehicle).
Take the chaos that has engulfed Brazil's airports for the past six months, the result of a creaking air-traffic control system operated by disgruntled air-force staff.
Actual flight performance has gotten more unpredictable because of problems in the air-traffic control system.
On the same day, Boeing announced the outline of the future air-traffic management system upon which much of the FAA plan depends.
The FAA predicts that delays will increase 62 percent by the year 2014, given projected passenger growth and the antiquated air-traffic control system.
If all continues to go well, the results will be plugged into the airport's air-traffic control system for real within a few months.
And we will restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system that reduces delays for the American people.
Mr Westendorp faces a huge agenda: the creation of a common air-traffic control system, free media and reformed police forces, to name just three objectives (all of which the Serbs resist).
Consider last week's fiasco involving the air-traffic control system.
As the battle over funding the Federal Aviation Administration and upgrading the nation's air-traffic control system comes to a head, anyone with anything to do with airlines is scrambling to get aboard.
The real problem is an antiquated air-traffic control system "that is essentially based on World War II-era technology, " says Victoria Day, a spokeswoman with the Air Transport Association, the industry's lobby group.
Mr. Cote is a longtime advocate of modernizing the Federal Aviation Administration's air-traffic control system, and has told industry officials heexpects to play an important role in devising ways to help airlines finance improvements.
Last year , at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, computer scientist Andrei Costin discussed weaknesses he said he found in a new U.S. air-traffic security system set to roll out next year.
The American Jobs Act includes an immediate investment in employing construction workers to restore 150 miles of runway at American airports and put in place a next-generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays.
The FAA says funding for the new fee system, combined with federal money, would shift the 40-year-old ground-based air traffic control system to a satellite-based, cockpit-to-cockpit system that is safer and more efficient.
In a presentation at the Black Hat and Defcon security conference in July, for instance, French security researcher Andre Costin presented vulnerabilities in the next-generation air traffic control system known as ADS-B that he said would allow a hacker with a software-defined radio to track and even spoof planes in the sky, potentially creating dangerous distractions for pilots.
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Better, maybe (surely?), to put more money into updating the air-traffic-control system.
And Congress is torn over a bill that would help fund a satellite-based air traffic control system to ease aerial bottlenecks.
The resources required of the air-traffic control and airport system to fly a chief executive in his jet are the same required to fly a 767 full of passengers.
Why should it be held to be any different from other government-owned transport modes like public roads, the waterways system, public airports and air-traffic control?
Michael Boyd, president of Colorado aviation consulting firm Boyd International Group, is critical of the recommendation, saying the country could handle the current flight demand -- and cut delays -- by improving its air traffic control system.
He said he was determined to "face up to the necessity of reform", an example of which is the part-privatisation of the National Air Traffic Control System (Nats) to be debated by the Commons on Tuesday.
Europe also has controller-pilot text messaging in use at two air-traffic control centers, and should have its system fully implemented by 2015.
Contract controllers are a widely used but little-known part of the FAA's air traffic control system.
Aviation experts contend that even if intruders were able to access a control tower and disrupt operations, the nation's air traffic control system is designed with multiple back-ups so that other facilities could pick up control of the affected air space.
The FAA took a half-step in that direction in 2008, creating a nonpunitive reporting system for air traffic controllers.
As noted here, the FAA proposed in mid-February a new funding scheme that links taxes to the amount planes use the air traffic system.
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