The Future of Air Travel Is, Fittingly, a Bit Delayed

If no news is good news, then the Federal Aviation Administration has had a very rough couple of years. Between Michelle Obama's plane aborting its landing and air-traffic controllers going all narcoleptic on the job and the administrator being arrested for drunk driving — well, there's been a lot of news there. By these standards, anything in the vicinity of not-terribly-bad news probably looks pretty good.

That's what the FAA got last week after a Congressional hearing about its most important project, the NextGen aviation system. After a February GAO report [PDF] found contracts for the system to be $4.2 billion over budget — again, lots of news there — the latest hearing suggested that NextGen faced implementation challenges but was essentially on track. When the worst headline slam you can give the FAA is "slow progress," that's an admission it's made some.