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More money has been spent in achieving a safe, modern Air Traffic Control system than on any other phase of aviation. The occasional publicity given near-miss reports is grossly unfair to the achievements already made... grossly unfair to the overwhelming majority of flights that are conducted under perfect safety. 
In 1956, there were about 8,000 air traffic controllers. And with the tools at their disposal, they could handle about 10,000 instrument flights every 24 hours. There are now 15,000 controllers and they're handling 24,000 instrument flights ever 24 hours. They have better tools--such as vastly improved radar. I don't think that an ATC system capable of handling 24,000 flights a day--more than twice as many as were handled less than 10 years ago--is an inefficient or potentially dangerous as its critics would have you believe. 
And it's going to be even more efficient and safer. Major improvements are just around the corner in Air Traffic Control. Automation is one achievement about to be realized. Adding the altitude of a plane to its speed and direction on radar screens is another. We're getting solid, impressive results--finally--from the millions of dollars spent in this vital field.
Are you afraid of weather? There are 10 times as many flights operating safely today as there were 15 or 20 years ago--and they're operating under weather conditions that 15 or 20 years ago might well have grounded them. We're landing planes routinely under ceiling and visibility restrictions that were considered impossible just a few years ago. Our navigation aids, runway lighting, weather reporting--they've all been improved to the point where the airlines last year completed 96 per cent of the scheduled milage. And as in