In article .net,
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

What am I missing? I am eager to learn how the current system works.


What do you want to know?

Since you asked...

1. What hardware does the current system run on? What operating system
does it use? Who wrote the software? What language was it written in?
How is flight plan data stored? Is it on hard disks? In a RDBMS? Flat
files?

2. How many flight plans per day does the current system handle?

3. How sophisticated is the current system in terms of auto-routing and
capacity management? Can it figure out that there are, e.g. too many
planes headed for a particular navaid at a particular altitude and route
new traffic some other way?

4. What actually happens when I'm waiting for my IFR release? Is the
computer involved, or is it just the controllers at that point?

rg