FAA's Aging Flight-Plan System Having Problems

Eddytor takes us to eWeek for a look at the FAA's air-traffic control system, which, after 20 years of continuous operation, is in desperate need of an overhaul. Recent crashes have caused major delays, but the system's scope and importance make it difficult to test upgrades and improvements. "Many technologies are used in air traffic control systems. Primary and secondary radar are used to enhance a controller's 'situational awareness' within his assigned airspace; all types of aircraft send back primary echoes of varying sizes to controllers' screens as radar energy is bounced off their skins. Transponder-equipped aircraft reply to secondary radar interrogations by giving an ID (Mode A), an altitude (Mode C) and/or a unique callsign (Mode S). Certain types of weather also may register on a radar screen."

Testing

[Dripdry]

Couldn't they just hook the new system into the current data that's being provided from RADAR and other sources alongside the old equipment? Hire testers (retired air traffic controllers?) to test use the systems and see how they hold up. Once enough data has been gathered, allow the some of the data to be fed to the actual ATCs, perhaps let them use the system side by side (not sure how that would work). Maybe it would be even better to just build a new ATC Tower with the systems built in already, hire an extra shift of ATCs or testers, provide training, and one day in the future just do a hot swap.

I realize the are hurdles, but unless I'm missing something (IANAATC) it seems possible, if costly.

Alternatively they could test it out at regional airports first, as the equipment and changeover is likely to be on a smaller scale.

They are fixing it

[Anonymous Coward]

I was an intern this summer at the FAA Technical Center. They are currently working on an overhaul of the national air space. The system that crashed a few weeks ago (the NADIN system) is in the middle of being replaced by NADIN II. They were testing it this summer. Also, look up the capstone program, its an effort to replace the radar based navigation with a GPS based system. ADS-B is a huge part of that, with the teams working on it winning the Collier award.

Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II

[GooberToo]

Car engines are more reliable then aircraft engines.

This is a common misnomer. Car engines typically spend > 80% of their engine life at 80% of their life at > 75% power. Few in the GA fleet are water cooled. Most are air cooled, which creates a far greater range of operating temperatures, most hot spots, and a much greater range of heat related expansion.

Most car engines operated as an aircraft engine experience a very short life. In fact, most engines which are operated as an aircraft engine are typically torn down and rebuilt following the race or event.

Long story short, few engines outside of aviation have the longevity that GA piston engines do.

Re:Four page article?

[rally2xs]

Gotcha. What you need is the rail system that you drive your car onto, it is a personal rapid transport that moves you in your car to wherever you want to go. It leaves when you enter the railcar, it doesn't stop until you get where you're going, UNLESS you want to stop and eat, etc. On-board computer navigates the rails like the interstate highway system. All you need is a rail switch that handles railcars individually (I know how to build that,) allowing them to be extracted from the midst of other railcars that are traveling in a "train", without slowing down that train, that are all self-powered from external power source, think nuclear initially, then solar / wind / geothermal when its ready. With such a system, you can eat in your car, smoke, play Black Sabbath at 103 db, and all the other stuff you can't do on regular public transport, in addition to traveling on your own schedule. Includes getting the nation off oil, getting the overcrowded highway system under control, the overcrowded air traffic system under control, the traffic death toll down dramatically, etc.

Re:FAA biggest joke ever

[jshackney]

You're only paying 2x as much? Sounds like a good deal. We had a Learjet a couple years ago that had a bad EL panel. Nothing fancy, just an EL panel with a handful of switches for radios. When the panel was previously replaced (about 4 years ago) it cost about $300. Two years ago, when we had to replace it again, it cost over $1200. A 4x markup in two years! Same P/N, and since there is no such thing as *new* for planes this old, it was also refurbished/remanufactured/rebuilt, however you want to look at it. I definitely blame the FAA and Insurance for the insane costs that we are seeing today.

"...TSA inspectors in the name of public safety by climbing up onto the aircraft, on these very sensitive pitot tubes."

Were these Rosemount styled pitot tubes by any chance? The costs for those things can be jaw-shattering. We had a lineman bend one on a jet right after it came back from RVSM installation and certification. He was trying to tug the plane with his car because the company's tug was broken down. He no longer works there.

Re:Four page article?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? No its not. In all the TCAS systems I've seen, you can select either a 20, 10, or 5 NM circle which will display little dots that represent aircraft +/-2000 feet from your altitude. If a plane gets within 2 NM or so, it will verbally warn you, but it's useful beyond that.

Re:Try Subsystem

[PPH]

I worked on both military and civilian air traffic control systems. The FAA and their consultants I met had that dangerous combination of arrogance and pig-ignorance that makes failure inevitable. They knew next to nothing about user interfaces, and had worse understanding of engineering tradeoffs than the average private sector middle manager (and that's pretty bad).

That situation has occurred by design. I've worked on a number of government programs, on the supplier side and I've seen the same thing.

By contrast, a good percentage of US Air Force officers involved in ATC actually knew what they were talking about.

Until Haliburton, or some other contractor gets their foot in the door to operate the system on behalf of the AF. This is not likely, but its a useful idea to illustrate what happens in other branches of the gov't.

1. Convince Congress that private business can do the job better and for less money.
2. Bid the support contract.
3. Have your contacts in Congress complain that it isn't fair having the gov't compete with private business. Get their in-house operations de-funded.
4. Hire the competent people away from the government. Leave the goofs behind.
5. ????
6. Profit!

The FAA has been targeted by private industry as a easy mark for lucrative IT contracts. As such, it isn't in their (private contractors') best interest to let them develop in-house expertise, or they might start building their own stuff and just buying components. To ensure that this doesn't happen, they apply lobbying pressure to keep the FAA's in-house IT operations under-funded, so talent moves toward private industry.