SATS 2005: A Transformation of Air Travel

Even a rare June extreme heat wave couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of some 3,000 people who came to Danville, Va., June 5-7, to see what could be part of the future of air travel: on-demand, point-to-point flights from neighborhood airports by advanced small airplanes and very light jets.

One of the benefits of such a Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) would be that passengers would not have to go through congested major airports.

Image above: Danville's Michael Jones checks out Adam Aircraft's A500 at SATS 2005. Credit: NASA/Jeff Caplan.
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Visitors came from as far away as Seoul, South Korea, to check out the SATS technical demonstration at the Danville Regional Airport. The demonstration was the culmination of a five-year public-private between NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Consortium for Aviation Mobility. The SATS project is led by a research team based at NASA's Langley Research Center.

Participants got a chance to "fly" simulators and learn more about cockpit displays and other systems that will allow more planes to fly safely, reliably and efficiently - even in bad weather - into community airports that don't have radar or air traffic control towers. Many also heard from noted aviation experts, including NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey.

"The technologies and operating capabilities demonstrated here could be the precursor of a whole new kind of air travel … one where people can fly where they want, almost any time they want in all kinds of weather," said NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. "This kind of personalized air travel could dramatically change how we live, how we work, and how we play."

The three-day event was called SATS 2005: A Transformation of Air Travel. It combined ground displays of new advanced planes, interactive exhibits, theatrical lighting, sophisticated video presentations and flights by six aircraft, complete with live cockpit video, to try to help the crowd visualize what air travel could be like if the SATS vision becomes reality.

"We came here to report out on what we've done for five years," said Jerry Hefner, NASA Langley SATS project manager. "The energy level that has been shown here, for an aeronautics event that NASA was a part of, compares to nothing I've experienced in my nearly 40 years at NASA."

The SATS technologies and operating capabilities center around letting the pilot know where he is, where potentially hazardous terrain is, what the weather is, how to fit seamlessly into the air traffic flow, where the other traffic is, where the airfield is, and how to sequence automatically into the airport.