FAA
On June 30th, the FAA will no longer issue “Taxi To” Clearances for runway assignments. Pilots won’t be able to receive a clearance with the expectation to taxi to the departure runway and be allowed to cross all runways en route. All runway crossings now will be accompanied by a specific clearance to either hold short or cross for each runway. Runways that are less than 1000′ apart may be given a single clearance.
Congress has or is about to pass the FAA re-authorization. This is great news, in that there are many pluses and a few minuses to go with the passage. There is the fuel tax, that will go up. Then there is safety changes, and money for research. The huge win so far, is the elimination of user fees.
The one item that may be hard to get excited about is the requirements for ADS/B that are attached to the legislation, since it means we need to spend more money on our aircraft. There are a few questions surrounding ADS/B and what it truly means. What equipment our aircraft will need, and what benefit we get from having it.
The requirements are for ADS/B out only by 2015, and ADS/B in by 2018. This seems pretty aggressive, and will rely on the FAA fully deploying the ground based stations to handle all the ADS/B traffic. In some metropolitan areas, ADS/B will work also using the Mode-S transponders and the RADAR that is in use today.
To meet the 2015 requirement, most aircraft (GA, business and air transport) will need additional equipment. ADS/B out will require a GPS receiver, and some kind of transceiver. The GPS unit will probably have to be mounted in the aircraft, and meet the C129 or C145/146 TSO requirements. The transceiver can be either a mode S transponder with the extended squitter capability (1090ES) or a Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) according to TSO-154c. Additional equipment may include antennas and wiring to support the new equipment added to the aircraft.
There is limited personal benefit to the ADS/B out. The position of the aircraft will be more accurate, and easier to correlate for the air traffic control personnel and computers. The update rate will increase, and there will be coverage in remote locations, especially in mountainous terrain. ATC may be able to offer separation information in places it wasn’t able to before.
The 2018 requirement will require a bit more equipment. Again, a GPS receiver will be needed, and a transceiver, but also a display will be required to make use of the extra information available. The GPS receiver may contain the display that can be used to display the information, or a modular system can be put together using a multi function display (MFD), a GPS receiver, and a UAT. Additional wiring will be needed, if the aircraft isn’t already equipped with a GPS and an MFD.
The benefits to ADS-B in, are many. Not only will the aircraft be able to send position information to each other, they will also be able to get traffic information (TIS-B) from ground based stations, along with weather and other flight related information (FIS-B). With ADS-B in, at a glance, a pilot should be able to see traffic, and weather, along with TFR’s and other airspace information.
Many of the current display manufacturers have built the capability into their display to accept this information, and participate in the NextGen FAA requirements. There are a few manufacturers today that are building UAT’s, but that will change when the ruling is finalized, and the avionics companies see that there is a market from this kind of equipment.
The new avionics will not replace the air traffic controllers. It will make the communications easier for the controllers and pilots. If the controller can say “aircraft at 8 o’clock”, and the pilot can look down and see the same thing the controller sees, answers will come with out asking.
Getting equipped early will be a mixed blessing. The facilities may not be there to utilize the equipment everywhere, and it will cost more, probably since there is a narrow market. Waiting until just before the deadline will provide another set of challenges, since the avionics shops will be full of procrastinators, but the costs may be lower, and the facilities will be there to fully utilize the investment.
Congress has handed the US pilots a new twist for our flying. It will be fun to have all this new equipment on our aircraft. It should make travel more efficient, and safer. It will be a challenge for the FAA to fully deploy the ground stations outlined in the legislation, and to equip all the aircraft. When it is finally finished, flying will never be the same.
Washington, DC — Today the National Transportation Safety Board adopted a study concluding that single engine airplanes equipped with glass cockpits had no better overall safety record than airplanes with conventional instrumentation.
The safety study, which was adopted unanimously by the Safety Board, was initiated more than a year ago to determine if light airplanes equipped with digital primary flight displays, often referred to as “glass cockpits,” were inherently safer than those equipped with conventional instruments.
The study, which looked at the accident rates of over 8,000 small piston-powered airplanes manufactured between 2002 and 2006, found that those equipped with glass cockpits had a higher fatal accident rate then similar aircraft with conventional instruments.
The Safety Board determined that because glass cockpits are both complex and vary from aircraft to aircraft in function, design and failure modes, pilots are not always provided with all of the information they need — both by aircraft manufacturers and the Federal Aviation Administration — to adequately understand the unique operational and functional details of the primary flight instruments in their airplanes.
NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman highlighted the role that training plays in preventing accidents involving these airplanes.
“As we discussed today, training is clearly one of the key components to reducing the accident rate of light planes equipped with glass cockpits, and this study clearly demonstrates the life and death importance of appropriate training on these complex systems,” said Hersman. “We know that while many pilots have thousands of hours of experience with conventional flight instruments, that alone is just not enough to prepare them to safely operate airplanes equipped with these glass cockpit features.”
Today, nearly all newly manufactured piston-powered light airplanes are equipped with digital primary flight displays. And the number of older airplanes being retrofitted with these systems continues to grow. “While the technological innovations and flight management
tools that glass cockpit equipped airplanes bring to the general aviation community should reduce the number of fatal accidents, we have not — unfortunately — seen that happen,” said Hersman. “The data tell us that equipment-specific training will save lives. To that end, we have adopted recommendations today responsive to that data recommendations on pilot knowledge testing standards, training, simulators, documentation and service difficulty reporting so that the potential safety improvements that these systems provide can be realized by the general aviation pilot community.”
Based on the study findings, the NTSB made six safety recommendations to the FAA:
1) enhance pilot knowledge and training requirements;
2) require manufacturers to provide pilots with information to better manage system failures;
3) incorporate training elements regarding electronic primary flight displays into training materials and aeronautical knowledge requirements;
4) incorporate training elements regarding electronic primary flight displays into initial and recurrent flight proficiency requirements for pilots of small light general aviation airplanes equipped with those systems, that address variations in equipment design and operations of such displays;
5) support equipment-specific pilot training programs by developing guidance for the use of glass cockpit simulators other than those that are approved by the FAA as flight training devices; and
6) inform the general aviation community about the importance of reporting malfunctions or defects with electronic flight, navigation and control systems through the Service Difficulty Reporting system.
The complete safety study will be available at www.ntsb.gov in several weeks.
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NTSB Media Contact: Peter Knudson
(202-314-6100)
EFIS Primary Flight Display
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a press release announcing that it is conducting a study of the effects of EFIS cockpits in today’s light planes in regards to safety March 9th in Washington D.C. This is a good first step.
Hopefully they will include the concerns posted in this Pilotbug post on whether EFIS, or glass cockpits, have a deteriorating effect on the scans of pilots who transition to a “Six Pack” type cockpit display.
Government investigators are making an unprecedented push to use “black box” voice recordings to routinely monitor pilots’ conversations and make sure cockpit crews are focusing on their jobs.The move represents the first time that workplace monitoring could extend into the nation’s cockpits and has drawn intense fire from pilots’ unions who say that the plan is intrusive.