The nation's decade-long economic expansion has led to sustained growth in demand for air traffic control services, and we expect to serve more than 1 billion annual passengers per year within the coming decade. In addition to being responsible for managing air traffic services, I've been a commercial pilot and an active user of aviation weather products for 25 years. Aviation weather forecasting requires unique skills and the timely delivery of unique products. For example, aviation users, pilots, and dispatchers need to know what is going to be happening in 2 or 4 hours. Next weekend's outlook isn't useful.
Immediacy is important.
Similarly, aviation users need weather forecasting not only for surface conditions such as at an airport, but also at many different altitude layers. Information such as the location and volume of lightning strikes, winds aloft, wind microburst, height of cloud tops, and density altitude are all pieces of weather information unique to aviation and not normally required by the average person. Wind speeds at various flight levels are needed by air traffic controllers to provide for an orderly traffic flow, but also by pilots and dispatchers to calculate fuel requirements. And, we all know how important turbulence forecasting is to the prevention of passenger and flight attendant injuries. The FAA is committed to ensuring the safety of American civil aviation.