Rising Launch Cadence Spurs Calls For Air Traffic System Coordination

The skyrocketing launch activity projected for the coming years is driving calls to coordinate those activities more closely with day-to-day commercial airline operations.

Launches have long been treated as largely one-off events, but with their cadence at roughly once a day and only going up, stakeholders in both space and commercial air transport argue that needs to change.

• FAA expedites closure of hazard areas
• JetBlue says one launch caused large delays

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said SpaceX recently told him it aspires to perform 10,000 launches per year, which caused his jaw to drop.

“I can see a future where we will be the limiting factor, because we are not putting enough funding into our space team,” Bedford told the Royal Aeronautical Society in Washington. The FAA needs more resources for that team, he said, noting that the agency is charging for launch and reentry.

“We need to be able to treat rockets just like we treat airplanes, where we can see each other in real time and coordinate around each other in real time,” Kiko Dontchev, vice president of launch at SpaceX, told delegates at the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization Leadership Summit, held during the Airspace World event in Lisbon on May 25.

SpaceX, by far the largest launch operator, flew its Falcon 9 rocket 165 times in 2025, and is on pace for a similar number this year. The U.S. Space Force forecasts more than 1,500 launches annually from all operators by 2030 just from home soil.

“Space transportation operations are no longer experimental or occasional,” Vanessa Robertson, assistant vice president of operational support at Nav Canada, said while chairing a debate on space operations and air traffic management at Airspace World. “They’re becoming a regular and increasingly complex component of global airspace environment with higher launch and reentry frequency, the emergence of suborbital operation and the expansion of spaceport infrastructure.”

Ottawa has spelled out a desire to have its own spaceport, eyeing Nova Scotia for the launch facility.

The FAA, SpaceX and other operators have been collaborating on space launches for years. “We are launching every other day now, so it is common for us,” said LaKisha Price, vice president of system operations services at the FAA. “We used to be static and close huge areas of airspace for about 4-6 hr. Now we do time-based launch procedures where, when the rocket is successful, we can close that hazard area quickly.”

Even so, some events have indicated the need for more cooperation. A SpaceX Starship rocket suffered an inflight breakup on Jan. 16, 2025, causing several commercial airline flights in the northern Caribbean to enter brief holding patterns or divert as a precaution against potential impact with falling debris. The FAA launched a mishap investigation because of the loss of the vehicle and cleared SpaceX to resume Starship flights after the company detailed corrective actions planned.

More recently, the agency has begun investigating a booster mishap during the May 22 Starship V3 flight, which did not affect commercial air travel.

As the FAA seeks to make managing space launches a repeatable process, the agency routinely produces and shares “pre-mission datasets” with all players for launch days and runs a “hotline” to keep all informed of launch progress, Price said.

Regulators issue notices to pilots to alert them of launches and keep-out zones. “An airline will assume that for the entire window, the airspace is hot, and so they will go ahead and reroute airplanes around that entire window,” Dontchev said. However, from the time of launch, the “reality is this area is actually hot for 9 min.,” he noted.

Despite some Starship mishaps, SpaceX has built up a high level of reliability with its workhorse Falcon 9. Dontchev argued that the time is approaching when industry can move from the static hazard area approach to a dynamic one.

“We really must start treating these launch vehicles and these space operations just like we treat airplanes, where we’re deconflicting in real time and managing it in real time—not closing airspace for a large portion of time,” he said.

Price said that step would require increased automation and data sharing, and he indicated that the FAA is keen to see that happen to minimize disruptions for carriers.

For airlines, streamlining could yield direct savings by eliminating disruption, rerouting and extra fuel burn caused by airspace closures.

One delayed launch led JetBlue Airways to incur “hundreds of hours of delays,” said Tania Helena, the carrier’s senior analyst for international programs. Improved information sharing with the FAA since has cut delays by 85%, she noted.

—With Graham Warwick in Washington