With the rising price of oil, flying the friendly skies these days can be a costly endeavor, but it's inefficient as well, according to a U.S. Congressional committee.

Delayed flights last year consumed about 740 million additional gallons of jet fuel, according to the Joint Economic Committee, totaling $1.6 billion in extra fuel bills for the commercial airline industry.

The committee said that air traffic delay-related burning of jet fuel also led to the emission of about 7.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year.

And those numbers are likely to go up, with wasted fuel costs potentially topping $2 billion this year, taking into account the rising price of jet fuel.

The committee said the total cost of domestic air traffic delays to the U.S. economy was as much as $41 billion for 2007, including higher airline operating costs, lost passenger productivity and time, and losses to other industries.

The committee's report, titled "Your flight has been delayed again," calls for an upgrade to the air traffic control system, converting the nation's radar based tracking system to satellite based technology.

David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, told the Cleantech Group that current air travel routes date back to the use of bonfires as visual guides for flying at night.

"When they went to radar, they just decided to put the radar sites, the radar beacons, on the same sites where these bonfires are," he said.

"An airline today flies from radar beacon to radar beacon, so they're still flying basically zig-zag paths, circuitous paths, instead of straight line flying."

If they had satellite technology, the airlines could fly in a straighter path, burning less fuel.

Castelveter said satellite based systems are already in use in Canada, the U.K., Australia, and even Mongolia.

And there's another technological drawback to the legacy system.

"On a radar scope, for a controller, they see this radar go around their scope once every 12 seconds," said Castelveter.

Since they only know where an airplane is once every 12 seconds, the controllers have to keep airplanes about five miles apart from each other to ensure safety.

"A satellite beacon gives you awareness within about a meter or two, so they can reduce the amount of separation between airplanes because they know better where those planes are," said Castelveter.

He said that means you can put more planes in the sky, with fewer airplanes sitting on the ground, burning fuel as they wait for clearance to take off.

But the proposed satellite system, called the Next Generation Air Transportation System in the U.S., will cost a huge amount of money, and take a significant amount of time to implement.

"It's billions," said Castelveter. "We think just for the airlines to upgrade its system would be about $15 billion, just to equip the aircraft."

He said the industry is willing to put in the new systems because the delays are already costing billions per year.

The Joint Economic Committees report pegged the cost of the delays at $19 billion for the airlines, with each delayed flight costing the industry extra for crew, fuel, and maintenance.

In addition to pushing for a new air traffic control system, the Air Transport Association is also calling for an increase in research and development for alternative aviation fuels.

A number of major players in the industry are already looking into biofuels.

Earlier this month, Morris Township, N.J.-based Honeywell International (NYSE: HON) said it was teaming up with with France's Airbus, New York's JetBlue Airways (Nasdaq: JBLU), and Connecticut-based International Aero Engines to look at second generation feedstocks such as algae (see Honeywell partners up to look at aircraft biofuels).

In March, Houston-based Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL), working with Chicago airplane manufacturer Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Cincinnati-based engine maker GE Aviation, said it would conduct a biofuels demonstration flight in the first half of 2009 (see Continental Airlines to test biofuels).

And the U.K.'s Virgin Atlantic announced in February that it completed the world's first biofuel-powered test flight of a commercial aircraft (see Virgin takes off with commercial biofuel test flight).

According to the report from the Joint Economic Committee, the top reason that flights were delayed, accounting for almost 40 percent of all delayed flights, was that other flights arrived late.

Funding for the NextGen traffic control system on the government side is still wending its way through the legislature.

"The implementation is more the challenge, and there won't be full implementation till 2025," said Castelveter.