me writes:

Not necessarily airport flight paths, but the general "corridors"
in which they fly. My understanding of this GPS based system
is that it planes will generate their own flight paths and to
a great degree "control" themselves. The result will be more
direct paths between airports. Paths which are not currently used
much or at all.

But the only residents exposed to noise from aircraft regularly are those
directly adjacent to airports. How would GPS navigation diminish this noise,
as the article implies?

The system being proposed is that each plane "broadcast" to other
planes their location, based upon GPS coordinates. Possibly also
their flight plans. It gets ATC "out of the loop" to a great degree
and merely puts them in more of a "monitoring" mode. I'm sure
each airport will still have a tower controlling take-offs and
landings.

Sounds like a terrorist's fondest dream. And each failure endangers aircraft
for miles around, and when there are lots of aircraft aloft, it's not
fail-safe, it's fail-for-sure.

There is plenty of airport capacity out there. There are a few
that are all jammed up, but plenty more that have little crowding at all.

Then apply quotas to commercial airline traffic, so that it is forced to
distribute the load over many different airports (or make fewer flights with
larger aircraft, which would be more efficient, anyway).

Their margins are low and they are trying to increase profits
through volume.

But they are not serving the public interest in doing so. Perhaps it's time
to re-regulate.