FAA's Aging Flight-Plan System Having Problems 176
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."
Crashes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well if we switch the system over the Vista, they will be one and the same.
*Drums*
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IMHO, the real problem with updating ATC is that the original ATC system was designed by veterans of SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) and thus had a really good idea of what would or would not work. Unfortunately, most of the SAGE veterans are either retired or dead and the only conceivable training program since then would have been the SDI program.
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A LOT of what we take for granted wrt computers was originally developed for SAGE.
Four page article? (Score:2)
The article says that the FAA's air traffic control system is broken and needs a bunch of help, but the article doesn't give any real suggestions. I'll give mine.
1) Give pilots in-flight radar.
2) Create new ATC system to make sure pilots follow flight plan
3) ??????
4) Lose money (cause you're an airline)
5) ??????
6) Profit?
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If you mean weather radar, they have it. If you mean radar to see other aircraft, they already have (available) TCAS [wikipedia.org] - Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System
Re:Four page article? (Score:4, Informative)
ADS-B [wikipedia.org] is the real in flight radar.
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ADS-B is not in flight radar. Few aircraft currently have it and the services is not universally available.
Furthermore, the FAA is working hard to f-up acceptance and universal value that ADS-B would provide for all aircraft. This is yet another example of the FAA working hard to keep modern technology out of the hands of pilots while keeping both costs and risks up.
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Ever been a pilot?
As a pilot, unless I cannot communicate with ATC I don't want to have yet another system to monitor. Cruise flight is not where the problem is, it is approach and departure and in those phases of flight I am one busy MoFo and I don't have time to stare at yet another screen full of mostly useless information, since I am busy flying the fucking plane.
Technology has come a long way, I don't have to constantly scan the engine instruments because they have warning lights and buzzers and whatn
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I love the idea of ADS-B, I just don't need more general information, I need information that matters. If the thing can tell me, "You are on a collision course with another plane and that plane is at bearing 304, altitude X, speed Y and give me time to intercept, then great, otherwise leave me the fuck alone, I got shit to do that is immediate.
If this makes the ATC system better, I am all for it, just don't give me more information overload, I have enough things to juggle, between managing the airplane, fl
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Re:Four page article? (Score:5, Insightful)
, but the article doesn't give any real suggestions.
People probably won't like my suggestion, which would be to regulate air travel again. Cut the routes, limit take off and landing slots, increase the seat and isle widths and let airlines raise prices to the market level of support. Add a gas tax to keep the cost of gasoline above $3.50/gallon and take the money pay for building a high speed train system across the US. To me that would be worth going into debt for, short term anyway. It would create jobs here and give people an alternative to our broken air transportation system.
The trains could handle the commodity traffic and airlines could compete for luxury traffic, just like the old days. We have to do something. We have 3% of the world population and use 25% of the gasoline. Without alternatives we're never going to get people out of their cars. If I could go anywhere in the continental US in 24 hours, I'd never fly again.
With the added bonus of keeping air traffic at a predictable level for the FAA.
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What you should have said is "We're never going to get people out of personal transport." People, especially here in the US, are independent creatures. They prefer personal transportation to mass, and personal right now happens to be gas.
Why don't we have electric cars yet? There was even a recent article here about all these people making their own because they're tired of waiting. In order to cut gas consumption, we must relax regulations on battery technology and allow more nuclear power plants.
Yeah, you
Re:Four page article? (Score:4, Insightful)
People, especially here in the US, are independent creatures. They prefer personal transportation to mass, and personal right now happens to be gas.
While people do often like their cars, as a person who has traveled by bus(both city and greyhound), train, plane, taxi, and car I have to say that there are reasons for so many people being almost glued to their vehicles.
To Wit: The alternatives suck. And the old saying: time costs money
For commutes, you're stuck using their schedule, not your schedule. When I had a *free* bus available, I mostly drove to work. Why? Because my work, despite being the one providing the bus, set the bus schedules in a paranoid fashion, resulting in adding 2 hours to my 12 hour work day. If it's simply added a half hour, I'd have taken it. The $2-4 saved back then just wasn't worth the time.
So, in any proposal to actually get people out of their cars, you have to acknowledge this. If you can make your theoretical public transport faster, cheaper, and more reliable than a car, you'd easily be able to get a large number of cars off the road.
That's why I like the idea of a high speed PRT system - you get the system's average speed above that of cars and a ticket that costs less than the gas to drive the same distance and you're gold. For an inner city system that'd often be 25-35 mph, for a interstate type system I'd want 100mph at a minimum*.
relax regulations on battery technology
Specifics?
*And a way to keep the same car when you stop to use the bathroom or even eat at a restaurant.
and allow more nuclear power plants
I agree with you here, but this reminded me of a local politician campaign add talking about 'adding more wind power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil'. I don't mind green energy by any means, but I detest fuzzy logic. Wind turbines produce electricity. Electricity, at this time, is insignificantly tied to our demand for oil. We could triple our electricity production and cut the cost in half and we'd barely reduce our demand for oil. At that, it'd be mostly people in the northeast switching from oil heating to electric. And they're already switching away from oil in many cases.
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In neither case is government regulations the problem. Battery technology hasn't advanced much because the people designing them still haven't figured out how to dramatically increase battery power. And there aren't any new nuclear power plants because it is hideously expensive to make them.
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There are no nuclear power plants because a few people have been able to block the technology and growth since the 1970s.
For example, "everyone" knows that a large number of people died because of Three Mile Island, right? Exactly how many died? 10,000? 1,000? Would you believe ZERO? No, I didn't think so.
So how many people died directly because of Chernobyl? Most people believe it was again thousands. It was 46, and they were all on the roof of the reactor building fighting the fire. A lot of people
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You missed one key point: We haven't built many new runways or airports in the last 20 years. Add to that problem the numerous reliever GA airports closing every year and you can see that the large airports are getting swamped with traffic they were never designed to handle.
Most of the congestion in our modern airspace system is on the runway! Modern navigation systems have significantly improved air safety and situational awareness. The chance of a mid-air collision away from the runway environment is n
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Absolutely. Here in Toronto, every airline wants to advertise a 7:00 am departure to NY, Montreal, Chicago, Ottawa, and a few other destinations. The result? 30 planes waiting to take off at 6:59 am (they all push back then so they can be "on time"), but because of the wake issues you pointed out, and the paucity of runways (2 at any one time) at YYZ, some of those 7 am planes are going to sit on the runway until 8:00 am.
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Bingo, because you're asking for a load of new government regulation to "save" us. The problem with that "solution" is that it's government regulation and subsidies that screwed up the US transportation system in the first place.
Howzabout we kick the government out of the transportation sector entirely (except for safety and consumer protection roles) and let the travelers select the best options with their own dollars?
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People probably won't like my suggestion, which would be to regulate air travel again. Cut the routes, limit take off and landing slots, increase the seat and isle widths and let airlines raise prices to the market level of support.
This would naturally happen if the government would stop subsidizing air travel. As is, AA being the poster child and SWA being the notable exception, few airlines are actually line like a business. If the government would stop handing out money, AA would go out of business or be
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If the government would stop handing out money, AA would go out of business or be forced to operate responsibly.
After all, they would be forced to operate like a business....
So, which is it? Operate as a business, cutting costs at every turn, or operating responsibly, even if it means taking a loss?
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So, which is it? Operate as a business, cutting costs at every turn, or operating responsibly, even if it means taking a loss?
It's a double edged sword for sure. With FAA inspectors doing their job, it's hard to cut costs on things that matter. With independent inspections, balance is maintained. Balance can be had and many operators find it. American Airlines is simply not one of those operators.
You're right, no one will like your idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ridiculous, and a sign of complete stagnation on your part. How about we either fix the system, or design a better one? The answer is not to stagnate, but instead to build again!
Telling people to return to trains is ridiculous, and who has time for that anyway? If the air system isn't safe, fix it. If it can't be fixed, then build a better one. There is nothing that people in the 80's could do that we shouldn't be able to equal, if not vastly exceed. They weren't magicians, and their technology was far less advanced than what we have been able to create in the intervening two decades.
Where do I even start with this? Here are just a few of the many things wrong with this statement:
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We have 3% of the world population and use 25% of the gasoline.
We use 25% of the world's gasoline, and produce 25% of the world's gross product (2007 numbers, from multiple sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) [wikipedia.org] )
As long as we continue to be that productive, we'll probably use a pretty sizable chunk of resources, too.
++Parent (Score:2)
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Trains? Sorry, but the train era ended around 1970. After it was decided that trains were no longer profitable, they tore up the tracks and sold the land off.
Today, if you take the train, you will find that passenger service has to wait on sidings until the track (just one left) is cleared because freight is also using it and is more important. On the east coast there are some train lines left with some passenger service tracks, but that is the exception to the rest of the country.
Nobody is going to buil
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How does mandatory big seats/wide isles help anyone aside from perhaps the obese?
Because if you limit take off and landing slots the airlines will try to find more ways to pack more seats into the cabin until they have people hanging under the wings. If you don't mandate seat and isle widths and specify the number of bathrooms per passenger it'll be exactly a week before some airline starts experimenting with "vertically oriented" seating designs to try and stuff more people in the tube so they advertise
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Maybe the ivory tower folks might not understand this, but perhaps the average American would rather be hung in a harness for 5 hours than to spend 30 hours on a train, or spending an extra $5000 for an airline ticket?
I agree that takeoff/landing slots should be limited to the quantity that can be safely handled. Probably the easiest way to handle this is via auction for 90% of the slots, with a fairly high fee for the last 10% so that non-advance-planned flights can still use the airport. Then consumers
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My coat cost $29.95 at an outlet mall. How much are coats in your area?
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It's true that crossing the Rockies is hard on a train. That doesn't negate the need for high speed rail elsewhere in the States.
Look at the map FFS. The Northwest Corridor extending through Richmond-Charlotte-Atlanta-Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami and Tampa; Houston-Dallas-Austin-OK City-Tulsa-Kansas City; Minneapolis-Chicago-Cleveland-Pittsburgh-NYC with branches into St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinatti; San Francisco to San Diego - these are all perfect candidates for high speed rail links. Travel time between th
Testing (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Who is this "they" you speak of? The FAA has neither the funds nor the expertise to do this kind of work themselves.
This will have to be done by contractors as a major overhaul, with opportunities to make billions of dollars clearing last generation, old technology systems out of their inventories.
Overhaul or upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's pretty apparent that the current system isn't up to the task. I think the real questions should be more along the lines of upgrade or redesign? and in-house engineered versus contractor engineered? I hear there is a replacement on the way, but is it an actual 1 to 1 replacement or is it just replacing a few machines but the heart of the system is some old POS box that's been running since 1988? (I've seen other government networks receive upgrades like this)
Given the vast scale of the system, the constant use, and the time it would take to retrain all of the operators, how would you start testing and implementing new hardware? Just continue running the same code on new hardware... providing a few software tweaks to allow it to scale? Just how old is the current system? DOS era computing? CTOS? ENIAC?
Re:Overhaul or upgrade? (Score:4, Informative)
Just how old is the current system? DOS era computing? CTOS? ENIAC?
The FAA's flight plan system uses two Philips DS714 computers. Network World ran an article in 2005 [networkworld.com] when the FAA announced that they'd be replacing them with two Stratus ftServer boxes. It's not difficult to imagine that they haven't come close to that goal yet.
If you want to see how creaky the DS714s are, take a look here [spencerweb.net].
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I still don't understand what's the big deal here.
There is an existing system which is apparently well understood, both in terms of operational details as well as problems they wish to solve.
How hard can it be to design a new system according to these specs, test it alongside with the old system (with real data!) and then roll it out?
If training is an issue then fine, provide an interface that's identical or very similar to the old one.
If you're worried about bugs then fine, test it until you feel comfortab
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Fail. A new system is supposed to be easier-better-faster. Duplicating the old interface usually isn't the way to get that.
If you're worried about bugs then fine, test it until you feel comfortable. E.g. by processing all (or a large portion) of incoming data twice, once by the regular operators and once by operators using the new system - then compare the results.
And 'regular operators' are suppose
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Sometimes you have to maintain (parts) of the old system because an overnight transition (training etc.) is unrealistic. This may be the case here.
Well, I'm assuming that there are spare operators on stand-by all the time, no? Ofcourse no real operator is supposed to test the system in between
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Obviously. In a system this large and ingrained, 'overnight' is impossible. And for the overlap, people have to do double work. Which controllers can't, because they are at their max workload already.
Well, I'm assuming that there are spare operators on stand-by all the time, no?
Bringing them online to 'test' means paying them when you wouldn't otherwise b
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It runs reliably for 20 years (Score:2)
...and then you call it "POS"?
How about credit where it's due. Could you design a system to handle the entire FAA flight plan traffic that would run for 20 years? A lot of lives depend on what you come up with.
Windows, I bet (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously they have to rewerite it for Google Chrome to compete with the LHC. [today.com]
Over-ambitious (Score:4, Insightful)
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They are fixing it (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Transponder codes are fun. (Score:2)
Transponder codes tell ATC what the manufacturer of a particular aircraft is. Our museum's B-17 has had a couple instances where a curious ATC will ask why his radar is showing a Boeing aircraft cruising along at 4000ft and moving at 150kts.
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Transponder codes tell ATC what the manufacturer of a particular aircraft is.
No, transponder codes tell ATC what your transponder code is (yes, I know that's a tautology). Any other information--such as a type designator or a tail number--is entered into the system by a controller and associated with your squawk code. The transponder only reports a number (four octal digits, for a total of 4096 possible codes), and altitude if in Mode C (Mode S is rare enough yet to be overlooked).
Our museum's B-17 has had a couple instances where a curious ATC will ask why his radar is showing a Boeing aircraft cruising along at 4000ft and moving at 150kts.
Because (nearly) all Boeing aircraft have type designators that start with "B." The controller may n
This problem seems simple.... (Score:4, Informative)
It it was only true!
There are so many points of failure in a system this complex, that it simply boggles the minds of the best architects we have out there.
Discloser... I am a pilot, I deal with Air Traffic Control and all the problems that they have
Let's begin with a single aircraft that will fly a from point A to point B. The flight is scheduled to leave at 0600Z from point A and arrive at point B at 1200Z for a total of 6 hours of flight time. The aircraft will have an SOA ( speed of advance ) of 600 kts ( nautical miles per hour ) and fly at 30,000 feet. Given this data the aircraft will cover 3600 nautical miles.
Given those parameters, it is simple to create and appropriate data structure that will represent the aircraft in question, allow us to create a series of data points to describe it's theoretical route, and predict where that aircraft is at any given moment with mathematical precision. In short it boils down to a rather simple database problem. Most any database cooker can come up with a set of queries to predict where crossing routes and position problems will be when you add more then one flight to the problem.
All of this will work just fine, right up until reality rears it's ugly head.
The cruise or en route portion of a flight is pretty much as simple as I have described, with the exception of having to readjust things based on headwinds, aircraft performance and other factors that may or may not change during the duration of the flight. We have gotten pretty good at predicting what the wind will be like at the planned altitude of the flight, but there are occasions when we are flat out wrong and have to make adjustments. If the winds at say 30,000 ft are not as predicted then to maintain the SOA the pilot needs to change altitude. So we can either propose a change, take that bit of data and run it through a "what if" calculation and then tell the pilot yes or no based on the result which will tell us if that action will cause a potential crossing problem with another flight, or have the software check all the flights currently in the system and have it give us an altitude that will not cause a crossing situation that is as close as possible to the desired altitude while maintaining a safety margin.
The real problem exists at the airports. Things get delayed, weather problems, mechanical problems, passenger problems, luggage problems, you name it, it is going to happen at one point or another. It backs the system up and then the simple database problem turns into the "Traveling Salesman Problem" from hell.
Let us consider a very probable occurrence..... Plane A is sitting at the gate getting serviced for the next flight. The fuel truck rolls up to full up the plane and the fueler gets out, gets his hoses out, plugs them into the fueling connection on the ground and connection on the plane. He looks at his manifest that reads 30,000 lbs of JET-A for this plane, he sets the controls on the fuel truck appropriately and starts pumping. For some reason when the meter reads 29,670 fuel starts spilling from the wing! His "Oh Fuck Light" goes of in his head and he runs for the truck to shut off fuel flow but by the time he makes it the 30 feet from where he is watching to make sure his connection is not leaking the meter now reads 29,980. So you have just spilled around 300 lbs ( about 50 gallons ) of fuel all through the wing and onto the ground. So this plane is not going ANYWHERE for at least the next couple of hours AT LEAST.
With this little problem, and it has happened to me things start to avalanche very quickly. I need another plane, another gate and I have to get the passengers and their luggage off of this plane, to the other plane at another gate, hint hint, this does not happen quickly. We are now occupying two gates and we are going to depart late, more then likely over an hour late if not a more.
So now the arriving flight that was supposed to park at the gate where the airpla
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Well, I'd sum up your anecdote up as a single, well-formed condition in such a system: DELAY.
Ofcourse approaching an optimized schedule and maintaining safe-route-prediction based on a constantly changing working-set does imply an array of a hard, greedy problems (travelling salesman, knapsack, you name it) but in the end it boils down to raw number-crunching power.
I mean, the current system (from the 70s?) can do it. I see no reason why an equal, or rather, a better system could not be created.
There's real
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Your description of the data structures needed seems to be covered in every OOD book... too bad the air traffic control system isn't concerned about planes but air space.
I'll try to point out why this problem is much harder than it looks with some other info.
The old system is based on allocating slots which most people don't seem to understand. Say your doing a low flight from STL to MKC (250 miles or so). There will be several slots allocated. You tell ATC when you expect to take off and the speed and th
End of 2008? (Score:2)
Ohhh - the replacement system won't be in place till the end of 2008.
Ah, as in 3 months? Not too bad - mus mean they are almost done. The hardware will go into place, be tested for weeks before it's turned on etc.
Federal (Score:2)
This is the problem with a federal agency being in charge of things! In order to upgrade the system, the taxpayer will have to pay additional taxes, or lose out because money has been re-budgeted from one project to another.
This is at the expense of every taxpayer, not just the ones who utilize the air travel.
The system should be privatized, but set to certain statutory standards of operation and interoperability. I'm not saying that airlines have to run it, but it should not be the FAA.
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I am all for privatization, right up to the point where there is a profit motive.
The nuclear Navy has a perfect safety record, not one reactor failure ( think 3 mile island ) ever yet nuclear power with a profit motive has a rather spotty record aye?
I have no problem with having a nuclear power plant in my hood as long as the plant itself is designed and built without a profit motive, because LOTS of lives are at stake.
I would have no problem with the ATC system being privatized as long as there is no profi
Try Subsystem (Score:4, Insightful)
The title and text of the parent post are inconsistent. The article is about the failures and obsolescence of the flight-plan system, but the discussion of radars, etc, in the text of the post is about other parts of the air-traffic control system. The flight-plan system interfaces to the part of the system that synthesizes radar data and allows communication from controllers to aircraft, but it is not that system. The reason for the interface is so you can do correlation of observed aircraft ID data, positions and position history with flight plans that have been filed. Then, if a plane goes off its flight path, the controllers can warn them and start emergency measures, which includes handing off to the air force.
The amount of data in a flight plan is pretty small, and the volume of messaging is on the order of a few million per year. Conceptually, NADIN is little more than a guaranteed-delivery email system. Next time they build the system they should consider routing over the Internet (of course using encryption) as a backup communication path. And there's also a huge amount that's been learned about system redundancy and scalability in the past few decades. The 99.9% uptime mentioned in the article is piss-poor for such a critical system. That's 8.76 hours per year of downtime. I delivered military systems in the 80's that had far better uptime. It wasn't even good in its own time.
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). By contrast, a good percentage of US Air Force officers involved in ATC actually knew what they were talking about. The FAA controllers I met were also shockingly ignorant of the capabilities and limitations of their systems, and some of their processes were there for historic reasons that no longer made sense. It was like dealing with overpaid DMV counter staff. It scares the hell out of me that people's lives depend on decisions that these knuckleheads make.
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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.
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Currently, as the CTO of a small software company, I've had some experience dealing with coordinating millions of records per day, in a dynamically load-balanced, auto-failover variably sized computing cluster. It's been working amazingly well, and developing the ability to deliver performance at this level has been hugely rewarding on a very personal level.
If you were hosting an application, how could you actually provide 100x your current hosting capacity in 30 days?
The problem requires very careful consi
Generic government IT woes (Score:2)
The FAA suffers from a number of problems specific to government IT systems.
As with private (corporate) systems, there is a tendency to keep existing systems running with duct tape, bubble gum and whatever until the cost of failures and inefficiency becomes intolerable. But unlike private systems, the red tape one needs to plow through to get anything changed is orders of magnitude greater. All acquisitions must be put out for bid. The terms are controlled by a rats nest of laws and regulations. Laws that a
Windows Server solution (Score:2, Funny)
Mode S capability's almost unused (Score:2)
Actually, the unique ID from a mode S transponder is not used for anything by the FAA's air traffic control system except for allowing it to send the position and direction of nearby aircraft to a cockpit display. The callsign is not retained in the system at all. My airplane's mode S transponder was about $2500 more than the same model of mode C transponder, and while having traffic information is nice, I'm not sure I'd make the same decision again knowing what I do now.
No fast changes (Score:2)
I was privileged in the past to visit the main ATC hub in the UK, and there they described the systems they used. They had a LOT of redundant systems but they were old, in fact in computing terms, some of it was ancient.
The head controller showing us around summed up the problem as this. As much as they would like to have new technology, it has to be tested and tested and tested to the point they could say the equipment is VERY reliable. Suppose they got a system using Pentium processors - the ones with the
Revolution at the FAA (Score:2)
Hey, let's try just changing administrations and giving the FAA new bosses who aren't Republicans. It's worth trying at FEMA and the Department of Justice. Since the last 8 years have seen so much Republican involvement in America's aviation industry, we've probably got nothing left to lose at FAA, either.
Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you can't read and understand it doesn't mean it doesn't have value to someone.
And what's that shit you posted at the end of your comment? Black People suck? Grow up, asshole.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Protip: large pasted post involving slipped in racist comments from an AC are one of the oldest forms of trolling used on slashdot.
Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II (Score:5, Funny)
Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.)
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
Dunno about you, but here in Southern California, getting the highs, lows, barometric readings, precipitation levels, wind speeds, wind directions, relevant surf, snow, rain or wind advisories, sun rise, sun set and current phase of the moon for where I live (and the same for a dozen or so nearby communities) from a friendly weatherman or weatherwoman that takes the time to describe and explain the relevance of all that information (hopefully with live footage, pictures, charts or graphs), is the only way to know with quantifiable certainty that tommorow's weather will be just like just like yesterday's and the day before that.
Unless, of course, you choose to look out the window or step outside long enough to realise you've probably got better things to do.
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i think a straightforward printout you can easily read in under a minute is much more useful to aviation professionals than a TV weather report.
a pilot doesn't need to know whether or not he should pack a heavy jacket if he's leaving town his weekend, or that this is the 2nd most humid day of the year, or any other miscellaneous info/small talk which TV weather reports generally consist of.
what pilots do need is precise and very specific pieces of info regarding their flight path and destination. they don't
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But if that weatherman came on one day and said i'm going to read a list of numbers, in this order: high temp, low temp, wind speed, direction, and visibility, he could come on every day and say 74,56,23,west,10000, and be done with it. A pilot doesnt need all the hunky dory graphics that the news weatherman puts up.
Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II (Score:4, Informative)
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
IMHO, the short answer is "Yes."
I can get info for the next 48 hours on ONE page, with all the data I'll need. Don't believe me? Great! Let's try something [for those in the US.]
First, got to the NOAA's [noaa.gov] page. Enter your ZIP code in the upper left-hand side of the page.
Next, scroll to the bottom of the next page and click "Hourly Weather Graph" in the "Additional Forecasts and Information" section. Read the next page carefully. Try mousing over the graph for information on a particular data point.
That page has all the data I'll need to plan my days/weekend in one place. I can read it in less than 10 seconds. If I want radar/doppler, it's a link at the bottom of that page, and I can even get the doppler in motion, with a limited zoom function.
So yeah, even counting the time to pull up the page, enter a zip code, and click a link, it's my opinion that 15 minutes is too long to get the same info I can get in around a minute.
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Ha! I bet you don't get that six times on the :x8's!
Of course, for people who haven't seen TheWeatherChannel, you have to wonder what the remainder of the time is spent broadcasting (and, no, it's not a bunch of people in a bar painted like cold and hot fronts colliding, as some commercials might lead you to believe).
My dad calls it 'weather porn', and I think that's a rather accurate description. If your inner geek has its mouth watering looking at pictures of Flourinert-immersed Crays, your inner weather
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Ah, grasshopper, you have not mastered the Tao of the Value Proposition.
Knowledge of the Tao cannot be obtained rationally, but there are stories which point the way. On such story concerns Sozan, a Zen master from China. One day, the story goes, a student came to Sozan asked: "Master, what is the most valuable thing in the world?"
The master replied: "The head of a dead cat."
"Why is the head of a dead cat the most
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How true - my Granny can only do UNIVAC SHORT code and 4004 assembly code. At her age, she'd also have no idea what a POKE is.
Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II (Score:4, Insightful)
I recently graduated from an aviation program at Purdue and I can tell you every single person I've ever sat down in a classroom with can read METARs, TAFs, and any other weather report just as quickly as if they were reading plain english.
More horseshit. I see cars on the side of the road almost daily on my commute. How often do you see a plane fall out of the sky because the engine died?
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More horseshit. I see cars on the side of the road almost daily on my commute. How often do you see a plane fall out of the sky because the engine died?
That's not really a fair comparison. Not only are there a helluva lot more cars out there, but aircraft engines probably get an order of magnitude or two more proactive maintenance and attention than 99.9% of car engines.
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Not that I disagree, but:
Ice in Fuel Caused Heathrow Crash [bbc.co.uk]
I suppose it's not technically an engine problem, but it's fairly related. It's just bad luck that you happened to write that two days after the report came out.
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More horseshit. I see cars on the side of the road almost daily on my commute. How often do you see a plane fall out of the sky because the engine died?
How many airplane engines will go 3000 hours with a minimum of maintance, and has an expected lifetime of 5000-10000+ hours without an overhaul? The main difference is the level of care taken towards airplane engines versus how people treat their cars. All other things equal, car engines are much more advanced and reliable, though airplanes tend to benefit
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Jesus Christ...nitpicking the phrase "fall out of the sky"? Seriously?
Yes seriously. It's statements like that why the vast majority of the public actually believe planes fall from the sky when an engine quits.
And to the ignorant mods, my statement is both educational and factual. It is not flamebait or trolling. Please learn the difference. Additionally, in the piloting community, correcting that statement is common for exactly the reasons stated above. Educating the public is a responsibility. This is a m
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during takeoff
This kills a surprising number of qualified pilots. AOPA had an article on this some number of months back. The article was called something like, "Push, push, push." Seems most pilots fail to push forward enough in a timely enough manner to prevent a stall and the following onset of an unrecoverable spin into the ground.
If you're not a member of AOPA, please join. If you are a member, go see if you can locate the article. It's a surprising read.
Happy flying.
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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 ty
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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.
This should read:
This is a common misnomer. Car engines typically spend greater than 80% of their engine life at less than 20% of their power. GA engines typically spend greater than 80% of their tim
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Interesting. There are quite a lot of auto conversions running around in the homebuilt community and they typically have TBO's in the range of 1500-2000 hours. And Engine failure, while slightly more common than in your standard Lycoming/Continental crowd, still happens very rarely. Especially considering most of these engines are homebuilt from parts kits and not professionally maintained I think that's a very good track record.
Honestly the whole "certified" engine issue is really holding GA back. A 40+ y
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There are quite a lot of auto conversions running around in the homebuilt community and they typically have TBO's in the range of 1500-2000 hours.
This is true, with a caveat. Most engines are not used simply because they weigh far too much. The list of engines which are often put into home builds AND which have a good safety record is actually a pretty short list. In fact, these engines are both prized and hard to come by. If you look at the RV crowd, those that don't do Lyc 320 or 360s hunt for cores datin
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Eliminating the user mixture control would allow the pilot (student pilots especially) to focus more on flying the airplane than tuning mixture for best economy. It would also reduce the wear and tear on an engine from improperly leaning the mix.
It's only a $20,000 - $40,000+ option, depending on your engine and airframe. This assumes you're in the market for a retrofit. You can imagine owners are jumping right on that. ;)
Modern ignition could allow for more power in a more reliable system than magnetos. CD
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Re:FAA biggest joke ever (Score:4, Insightful)
First let me say, I am no friend of the FAA. Everything in life is is a trade off between cost and risk. Everything. Period. In many cases, unless you're willing to pay $10,000 for your next coach plane ticket, many "fixes" are simply not cost effective given its low risk of occurrence.
Having said that, the FAA, as it relates to GA, is directly responsible for everything costing 2x or more than it should. They are also responsible for maintaining, if not elevating risk in many areas. Free market competition is vary rare for almost all aspects of GA aviation. Attorneys are directly responsible for all things GA aviation related costing a factor of 2 more than they should, in addition to the FAA's overhead.
If people really want to increase aviation safety, half the size of the FAA, require a pilot license to head the FAA, double the number of inspectors for commercial operators, and force a revamp of the certification process. As is, the FAA is directly responsible for keeping newer, safer, smaller, lighter technologies out of most cockpits and engine bays. Remember, it's a question of cost and everything aviation related is inflated 4x-8x higher than it would be if free market forces and liability protection would be allowed to function.
You are right about one thing, in many cases of aviation accidents, the FAA does have blood on its hands.
In more recent times, the spectre of the TSA has raised its head and is now starting to negatively impact aviation safety with no return on public safety. Does anyone remember the B2 bomber crash? Turns out some moister was the cause, inside some instrument pitot tubes. Now imagine TSA agents wilfully damaging the same types of instrumentation on commercial airliners in the name of public safety inspections; which are impossible to improve public safety. Recently, as many as 10 aircraft were ignorantly sabotaged by TSA inspectors in the name of public safety by climbing up onto the aircraft, on these very sensitive pitot tubes. Thankfully a pilot noticed some abnormalities and aborted his takeoff. Now keep in mind, it is impossible, regardless of the damage created, for these types of inspections to improve public safety.
Don't be fooled, the TSA is fighting hard to "get into the cockpit" and I have no doubt, public safety will continue to be compromised unless the public is educated on the dangers the TSA's well meaning yet ignorantly harmful involvement will cause. It's only a matter of time.
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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
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You're only paying 2x as much?
I wish. I think you missed the part where I explained that was only the first multiple. I went on to say, "Remember, it's a question of cost and everything aviation related is inflated 4x-8x higher than it would be if free market forces and liability protection would be allowed to function." Sadly, I'm paying the same extortion prices you are.
Were these Rosemount styled pitot tubes by any chance?
The several articles I read on this story did not state the name of pitot tubes bu
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It's actually well known that many of the tubes they require are no longer available and a replacement is no longer manufactured. In many cases, they have been forced to Ebay to obtain old equipment which does have the proper tubes and misc. other parts.
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