“Almost 15 years have passed since the infamous Patco strike, which ended with President Reagan firing 11,400 of the nation’s 17,000 controllers, but the F.A.A.’s system for moving airplanes safely across the skies has never been closer to chaos. Many of the nation’s airport control towers and radar rooms still have fewer fully trained controllers than before the strike, yet the number of flights they must guide through the teeming skies has soared in some facilities by 200 percent. Meanwhile the computer and radar equipment they must do it with has grown scandalously old and degraded. Last year, air traffic control centers — some with 30-year-old, vacuum-tubed computers — suffered more blank radar scopes, dead radios and failed power systems than in any previous year, according to Representative John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.” - × × ×