Air-Traffic control at major airports

Air-traffic control is parasitic on the air-transport industry, and hence faces the problem of adapting itself to changes in the environment over which it has little or no control. During the spectacular changes in air transport over the last 40 years, there has been a great deal of development but little fundamental change in the electronic tools used by a.t.c. The instrument landing system and secondary radar are both about 35 years old. Even if we are now using integrated circuits, it is a.t.c. which has evolved around the electronic aids, rather than the other way round