The thing that gives me hope here though is that it seems like everyone's economic incentives are aligned fairly well. There are still a fair number of flights from YYZ on small regional planes (and "regional" seems to be covering a larger and larger area every year), if the cost per flight at Pearson goes up because of demand there'll be pressure on the airlines to use bigger planes. And from the passenger point of view there's really not too much of a difference between flying on a smaller plane or a larger one. 250 passengers embark/disembark slower than 100, but aside from that the majority of the trip is roughly equivalent. It does seem like the long haul routes are generally moving to smaller more fuel efficient planes - but what is the make up of traffic at Pearson?
I agree that progress on a lot of the air traffic control side of things moves slowly. But that can change quickly if there becomes a big push to modernize - and technology itself can change quickly and totally upset the long range plans. For example, if (big if?) we have full self-driving cars in 20 years, its hard to image that parts of that same technology won't flow through to vastly improving planes and plane movements.
I agree that progress on a lot of the air traffic control side of things moves slowly. But that can change quickly if there becomes a big push to modernize - and technology itself can change quickly and totally upset the long range plans. For example, if (big if?) we have full self-driving cars in 20 years, its hard to image that parts of that same technology won't flow through to vastly improving planes and plane movements.