FAA Greenlights Satellite-Based Air Traffic Control System 138
coondoggie writes "As one of the massive flying seasons gets underway the government today took a step further in radically changing the way aircraft are tracked and moved around the country. Specifically the FAA gave the green light to deploy satellite tracking systems nationwide, replacing the current radar-based approach.
The new, sometimes controversial system would let air traffic controllers track aircraft using a satellite network using a system known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B), which is ten times more accurate than today's radar technology. ADS-B is part of the FAA's wide-reaching plan known as NextGen to revamp every component of the flight control system to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky."
Not changing anything soon... (Score:5, Informative)
Because of the security risks involved with having each plane report their own position, rather than aircraft control finding all the positions for planes, I highly doubt that old fashioned radar is going anywhere soon.
Also, while this will be more accurate in areas where radar doesn't reach, I don't remember hearing about many planes crashing in midair too often....
Re: gridlock in the sky (Score:5, Informative)
Parick Smith, the salon.com airline captain columnist, has just written about it again.
Nice comment [salon.com]about the usefulness of opening military corridors for civil aviation around thanksgiving:
"It will have roughly the same effect as, say, organizing a group prayer or rubbing a plastic airplane for good luck."
what's tracking going to do? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, it might decrease the already low probability of midair accidents, but the air traffic control system has bigger problems. Firstly, that they are understaffed and overworked. It's the highest stress job in the civilian sector last I looked and these people are pulling 10 and 12 hour shifts every week. They're tired, and they make mistakes. They're also an aging group -- the certification requirements are high, and very, very few people who are under the age of 30 work these jobs. Many of them are set to retire in just a few more years which will stress an already fragile system.
Second, nobody's been investing in airport infrastructure. The planes are getting bigger but the runways aren't and we're not adding new runways either. Part of it is politics but a lot of it is economic.
Third, communications -- they're still using one-way VHF. Two people talk and the signal heterodynes and nobody knows what was said. They need a better comm system.
Lastly, much of the processing infrastructure is running on 1960s tech -- old mainframes. They haven't upgraded in all this time because there's no other options. What good will satellites do if the ground control stations are still running vaccum tubes? We need to network the ground stations together and provide a better interface with the birds in the sky. One of these big iron setups went down in New York and it paralyzed most of the eastern seaboard. That lack of redundancy in such a safety-critical environment is simply unacceptable.
Re:what's tracking going to do? (Score:3, Informative)
As I understand it the traffic problems in the USA are primarily on a few high traffic routes like New York to Washington. If they invested in high speed rail on those links the congestion problem in the air might not be such an issue.
Er, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express [wikipedia.org] ?
Re:Not changing anything soon... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: gridlock in the sky (Score:5, Informative)
The nature of ADS-B is such that there is the potential for ADS-B equipment to be considerably cheaper than traditional transponders. It remains to be seen whether this will be borne out, and I'm pessimistic about it, but the potential is there.
In any case, I never denied downsides, but there are upsides as well. As a glider pilot, I'm excited because ADS-B will probably be considerably more practical to install in an aircraft with a battery-driven electrical system.
Re: gridlock in the sky (Score:5, Informative)
while i agree that the post 9/11 airport security measures and completely pointless and make flying an absolute nightmare, that does not negate the benefits of this new system.
firstly, it's not the lack of "airspace" that this system is addressing. ADS-B provides more accurate/precise information to pilots in addition to having far more extensive coverage than radar. not only are they getting weather & air traffic information for improved situational awareness in the air, but this technology is also being used to help pilots navigate on the tarmac:
in fact the worst plane accident in history (excluding the 9-11 attacks, which were deliberate terrorist acts) was the Tenerife airport disaster [wikipedia.org] (1977) which involved the collision of two 747s on the runway. since pilots rely so heavily on air traffic controllers to help them navigate the runway, a simple miscommunication due to a language barrier between the pilot and the tower caused one of the 747s to be parked directly in the path of another 747 preparing for take-off. and because looking out the window was the only other way for pilots to see their surroundings (and avoid collisions), the heavy fog covering the airport that day obscured the two planes from each other until it was too late. this accident could easily have been prevented if ADS-B had been in place, since the pilots in both planes would have been able to clearly see their relative position to each other and to the layout of the runway system.
lastly, i want to point out the crash of Avianca Flight 52 [wikipedia.org] in 1990. this incident occurred during foggy conditions as well, but this time the root cause of the accident was due to the 707 being put in a holding pattern for over an hour until they literally ran out of fuel and crashed. the 707 was actually given priority landing right before they ran out of fuel, however due to bad wind shear info given by the flight controllers the plane dropped below the glideslope, resulting a missed approach. however, they didn't have enough fuel for a second approach. the engines flamed out; the plane lost power; and then it crashed.
accurate weather info, more tightly spaced landings, less time in holding patterns, and less fuel expended for landings would all improve the safety and efficacy of commercial air travel. perhaps if the planes on the ground that night had been able to taxi themselves using the ADS-B display, the decreased workload on the tower controllers would have allowed them to land more planes in a shorter amount of time--maybe ev
Re:Speaking as a pilot. . . . (Score:3, Informative)
I think this statement is quite silly.
1) Coordinates do not help you if you have a shoulder-launched SAM. You track the target visually, during approach or takeoff.
2) If you want to down a plane that is beyond visual range, you don't need coordinates: your SAM is radar guided, and you work for some country's armed forces. That plane is going down whether it transmits coordinates or not.
End of story.
d.
Re: gridlock in the sky (Score:3, Informative)
There's a small chance, if you are willing to accept a reasonable aviation price instead of a price that any outside observer would think to be reasonable. MITRE has developed a reference design for an ADS-B unit which runs off a few AA batteries and could conceivably be produced for just a few hundred dollars if the FAA can be convinced to allow less rigorous certification standards for this sort of application. Whether they can be made to see the light remains to be seen, but it's at least possible even if not likely.
Re: gridlock in the sky (Score:2, Informative)
Not all aircraft are in the "tower" airspace. "Center" radar updates are once in ~12 sec (tower/TRACON at about 5 sec). ADS-B updates once a sec (ok, two squitters per sec on 1090 MHz for you geeks, UAT is 1/sec).
The information is not just for ATC. It can be/is also received by other AIRCRAFT that are properly equipped.
And there is no ATC direct communication over the ocean (OK, you speak to an private company operator over HF, who relays it to the controller etc. -- I am ignoring a bit of non-mainstream communications here.)
Re:Not changing anything soon... (Score:3, Informative)
Because of the security risks involved with having each plane report their own position, rather than aircraft control finding all the positions for planes, I highly doubt that old fashioned radar is going anywhere soon.
It's no more of a security risk than the current system which relies on each plane to report it's own position with a transponder.
satellites are not "tracking" the planes (Score:4, Informative)
What this is really about is that the airplane's transponder (simply a radio that transmits about 200 miles around) will broadcast not only the plane's ID tag, but also it's GPS position. Satellites only come into this system in the sense that the airplane has a GPS receiver on board, and GPS is of course satellites. So each airplane broadcasts not only who it is, but where it is. The other new part is that all the airplanes will recieve and process that information to give the pilots a picture of who else is flying around near them. Furthermore, ground radar stations will broadcast on the transponder channel as a proxy for those aircraft that are not equipped to transmit their GPS.
Historically, planes have always transmitted an ID code (mainly, a manually assigned code from the air traffic center who is most recently responsible for them). The next big thing was for the transponder to also include the aircraft's altitude. Now, these are called "transponders" because they only transmit when polled by a ground station's radar sweep. And until recently, only the ground controllers received the transponder hits from the aircraft. About 10 years ago, planes (expensive airliners, mainly) started receiving and processing the nearby transponder responses as well, so that they could see what other planes were at their altitude. This is a collision-avoidance system. So now that planes are equipped with GPS comes the revolution: they can transmit their precise location to each other, and also to the controllers, and everyone can see a complete picture of where all the nearby planes are. This will ultimately enable pilots to fly more efficient routes, allowing more freedom for the controllers and pilots to work things out dynamically.
Re:Not changing anything soon... (Score:4, Informative)
The military is addressing that very issue. very slowly but they are. I do believe the missiles for the f-22 and the f-35 use the same interface. they are doing this from a logistics point, as each plane literally needs it own equipment for testing and in the field having to lug 12 different interfaces around has proven to be a pain.
Think of it less in terms of contracts and more like the auto industry. each brand of car(ford, gm, toyota, honda, etc) and each car in their respective lineups would use different engine codes in their computers, and in some cases different plug interfaces for the information.
to get a ford f-150 engine computer interface you had to spend several hundred if not thousands of dollars. and again for every different unit. Manufactories think such things needed to be kept secret. yet years of pressure has finally brought at least some standardization in that area allowing less expensive diagnostic units.