Barret Asks Air Traffic Control Experts: Are You Concerned We Put ‘All Our Eggs In A GPS Basket’?

11 hours ago

During last week’s House Transportation Committee hearing, Rep. Tom Barret (R-MI) questioned experts about the future of air traffic control innovation.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Thank you. I will now recognize myself for five minutes. Appreciate the panel

00:05being here and appreciate your testimony before our committee today. Mr. Daniels

00:10in particular wanted to appreciate your work and the work of your air traffic

00:13controllers and the job that you do keeping us safe. I spent time flying

00:17aircraft in the Army, worked, you know, on one side of that equation and always

00:22appreciated the air traffic controllers that kept us safe and kept us in the

00:26right direction to keep our airspace absolutely as safe as possible. I know

00:31that Mr. Massey had that graphic up on display and I don't know if we can bring

00:37up just that screenshot that we left off on or not, if that would be difficult, but

00:42you could see in there the two icons representing the two aircraft. It said CA

00:47and that was flashing on that screen. I was hoping you could give us a little

00:52bit of insight. Is that a collision alert? Is that what was being flagged for

00:56the controller at that moment? Congressman, good morning to you. Yes, while

01:00I can't speak to specifics on the incident because we are a party to the

01:03NTSB investigation going on, that CA does stand for a conflict alert. Okay, and I

01:09fully appreciate we are not the NTSB. This is a legislative committee hearing,

01:13but as we understand that, can you walk me through a little bit about what that

01:19would look like, how frequent that is, and whether or not it is so often, in your

01:25experience, not specific to this incident, but in your experience, is that alert

01:30something that is so frequent that it can become cluttered for the workload

01:36for the air traffic controllers? Thank you, Congressman. Yes, many different

01:39airports have many complexities to them. Some of them are involved in areas where

01:45that goes off consistently and continuously. Look no further than

01:49Burbank Tower. When you go out there, there is always some level of a general

01:53aviation or final going over the top of another airport with aircraft that were

01:57not working. So they can become nuisance alerts. We do have local safety

02:01committees that evaluate those alerts, engage, and find ways to ensure the

02:05safety of the flying public. Okay, thank you. This next generation effort that is

02:11underway right now, would that lead to less, I don't want to call them erroneous

02:17alerts, but less nuisance alerts and more actual alerts that might draw the

02:21attention of air traffic control in a more urgent fashion? Congressman, we

02:27embrace any new technologies that bring controllers awareness, enhances safety,

02:32and as long as we actually work with those persons creating and designing so

02:37we don't waste the taxpayers money when bringing us a product that actually

02:40doesn't suit our needs. Okay, would the ADS-B at full integration assist with

02:45that or or not? Congressman, as far as the technical expertise on the ADS-B

02:50portions of it, I would have to get back to you to seeing what the impacts would

02:54it be in the context that you're putting in it. Okay, thank you. And then Mr.

02:59Sparrow, a question for you. Can you walk us through a little bit of the TCAS

03:05system, how that works, and I know it's cockpit to cockpit and you know maybe

03:11the safety track record on that and some of what that has involved. Thank you for

03:15the question, Congressman. So TCAS is not a system that our technicians maintain.

03:20That's something that the airlines handle themselves. Okay, does anybody on the

03:24panel have expertise with TCAS at all that can opine on that? Well sir, as you

03:30know as an aviator, we've got multiple systems that are out there. The TCAS

03:33though, in this case, it does get disinhibited or is not enabled when you

03:40get close to the ground and that's why ADS-B gives you a capability to be able

03:46to have awareness of altitude, especially you know we looked at that that video

03:51there, that's the two-dimensional depiction. The three-dimensional

03:55depiction is available to us as pilots in the cockpit using ADS-B when we get

04:01down closer to the ground. Now that means that everybody's got to have ADS-B

04:06operational and using it, but it's an enhancer that also helps Mr. Daniels'

04:11community be able to go in and help with the deconfliction. Sure, and I know that

04:16the TCAS, the audio tone is disabled below a certain altitude, but I

04:22believe it's below 500 feet generally. Is that your experience? Yes, sir. But the alert for

04:27that would come far, it's not just before impact, right? There's a standoff

04:34separation that would alert through TCAS prior, you know, if

04:41you were approaching 500 feet, the audio tone and the alerts would have come

04:44prior to that threshold in all probability, correct? Yes, sir, and it

04:48gives you commands to be able to go in and do the actual maneuver of the

04:52aircraft to deconflict. Okay, my last question, I'm kind of short on time, for

04:58any of you on the panel, this next-generation air transportation

05:01system, I know it's heavily reliant upon GPS. We have fewer and fewer ground-based

05:07VORs that are operational right now. Is there any concern that as we migrate

05:12away from the radio-based ground systems that we are putting all of our eggs in a

05:17GPS basket that could open a vulnerability that we would not have a

05:21backup system for that purpose? Congressman, let me jump in. I think resiliency is

05:27very important. There's a lot of issues with GPS now and you hear

05:33about spoofing and other aspects. It's very important that the FAA maintain a

05:38resilient system with ground-based technology. Do you know how many

05:42briefly are, percentage-wise, no longer operational ground-based radio signal

05:48VORs? So, there was a VOR, they called it the VOR Mon program a few years ago,

05:53that they began to phase out a number of them. It was done in a risk-based process,

05:59but probably half of them have been eliminated around the country. I think we

06:03could get you the numbers. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Barret Asks Air Traffic Control Experts: Are You Concerned We Put ‘All Our Eggs In A GPS Basket’?

Category

Transcript

Recommended