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The Federal Aviation Agency, which has been closely following the Navy experiments, is less enthusiastic about the new concept. Its advantages, the FAA feels, would be far outweighed by the extra cost of building the banked circular runways, burrowing under them to provide access roads to the central terminal area, and installing complex ground-control systems. Even so, the Navy report has stirred the interest of aviation officials. It may well trigger more imaginative research into an area of aeronautics that has remained relatively unchanged since the Wright brothers used the dunes at Kitty Hawk as one of the world's first airfields.
