Air traffic tools with a political return

It won the seal of approval from the Air Transport Association the other week as key to replace the FAA's ageing infrastructure of ground-based radars and other vacuum-tube era terrestrial technology. Now this new navigation and surveillance system, dubbed ADS-B, which relies on GPS satellites, has a firm commitment from the FAA itself. With ADS-B (or Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast), planes use Global Positioning Satellites to determine their exact position and then broadcast their position every second.  The position reports are broadcast to ground stations that cost about $500,000 a piece, a fraction of the cost of a full-scale radar installation, keeping controllers aware of the locations of planes. Pilots also receive the location information if their planes have the relatively inexpensive ADS-B equipment, so pilots can avoid or follow other planes.

The technology has been part of the FAA's suite of modernisation tools for years, but FAA Administrator Marion Blakey's endorsement of ADS-B as "the future of air traffic control" marks the agency's strongest commitment yet to the satellite system as "the backbone of a more automated" system. Without it, she said, "there is no next-generation system."

The FAA wants $80 million in its next budget for ADS-B but in this age of limited resources, the technology has a great advantage in competing for congressional funding: it will allow the FAA to set an aggressive schedule to tear down, remove or replace the ageing radar installations and other crumbling elements of its Air Traffic Organisation infrastructure while adding capacity to an already-burdened system. That was key in the Air Transport Association's recent endorsement of ADS-B as a cost-savings technology that proposed user fees could easily support.

"It's the way we're going to be addressing the horrific congestion we expect to see," Blakey told reporters, calling it "the FAA's moon shot". Blakey said the controller workforce - which was not represented at the announcement - strongly supported ADS-B because the new technology lightened their workload and would not infringe on their separation authority. FAA and its controllers are deadlocked in negotiations toward a new work contract, and the agency says it cannot afford their salary and benefit demands.

FAA official Vincent Capezzuto, the ADS-B programme manager, said the FAA plans a limited installation of the system in a few spots around the country by 2010 at a cost of $600 million to the FAA and airlines, but estimated that savings from lower fuel burn, more efficient routings, and terminal area capacity gains will save them $1.3 billion. She said that by 2014, the new system will cover all areas currently served by radar by 2014. UPS pilot and Director of Operations Karen Lee said the cargo hauler could save $2 million a year in fuel solely in its Louisville terminal area by using ads-b to help make more efficient landing approaches. UPS already uses the technology on 107 of its airplanes, and plans to equip 116 more of its fleet with ADS-B sets. The technology has also produced positive results in the Capstone tests in Alaska, and Australia's aviation authority plans to install it.