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TR: As you alluded to earlier, future air-traffic control could be based on planes beaming out their GPS data, a technology known as ADS-B, that will join--and in some cases replace--radar-based monitoring. Will this help?
JH: The FAA is requiring ADS-B in the next 5 or 6 years, which will allow transmission of position and other aircraft states (such as velocity). This will initially be for commercial passenger aircraft, but the expectation is that it will be common for all aircraft. This will become part of the FAA's surveillance system. Examinations of radar tapes would be supplemented with GPS-based ADS-B data, which will be higher resolution and have a faster update. You will then still need an antenna in range to receive the information. If you don't, or if it's blocked by a building, you would still need that data onboard the plane if you wanted to recover this information after a crash.
TR: This crash has led to a political drumbeat for tighter restrictions on small planes around Manhattan, because of the apparent terrorism risk. What's your take on that?
JH: The interesting thing is that this event shows that small airplanes are not threats to buildings. There's all this talk about regulating planes more; but what this shows is that if you take a fully loaded small airplane and fly it into a building: the airplane bounces off the building. They don't have enough energy to penetrate and challenge the structural integrity of the building.
TR: This plane included a parachute designed to support the entire plane in an emergency. Could it have saved lives in this situation?
JH: The parachute is interesting, but it doesn't protect you from everything; at low altitudes it does not work because there is not enough time for deployment. It's not clear that at 500 feet or below they could have deployed it reliably.
The article by David Talbot, titled “Tracking Small Planes with GPS”, was informative and interesting, but I feel it lacked the vital summary of the current position of the private aviation industry. The idea of placing GPS tracking and recording devices had been present in the private aviation industry for over 15 years; however, the main regulating body “FAA” has been hesitant about forcing any restrictions on private plane owners. A large percentage of private aviation occurs outside of large metropolitan areas, and as stated by the previous commenter, the FAA is deliberately slow in enforcing adoption, They are deliberately slow because they require, for their up and coming ADS-B system, a large supporting infrastructure which takes time to construct and because they are worried about opposition from and overburdening private plane owners. For these reasons, a “final ruling by the FAA isn’t due on such a system until 2009.”
So could technology come to the rescue of these pilots? The answer is a definite yes, but the main questions becomes, “Is it worth forcing GPS enabled tracking on the populace of private pilots when only a very small percentage of planes are crashing?” Only time and more accidents will tell; however, the options are many, from limiting entrance into GPS enabled airspaces to all out enforcement of GPS enabled tracking ADS-B systems.
www.techrd.com
Brian Glassman
Innovation Management
Commercialization of technology
Thanks to David Talbot for so many excellent articles. I think all planes should be required to have equipment for GPS location and be able to receive verbal instructions from the military or airport flight control. I was told by a nuclear plant senior employee that all U.S. nuclear power plants have a 10 mile no-fly zone. It apears obvious they are vulnerable to attack via airplane. A solution to this problem would be pilotless drone planes continually circling above the 10 mile no-fly zone with radar that could warn them of approaching planes. I would think that the drones could be controlled by the closest Air Force base, and if necessary prevent repeatedly warned planes from flying into the no-fly zone. They can't be warned if they have no reliable ways to warn them. Such communication capability should be required on all planes. I would feel much safer if nuclear power plants and nuclear waste fuel storage facilities could be protected in this way.
In the two incidents since 9/11 where a small General Aviation airplane hit a large building, the score is Buildings 2, Airplanes 0. The notion that Nuclear Power Plants are in any danger whatsoever from GA aircraft is not supported by reason. We shouldn't waste a penny with ludicrous ideas like protecting tons of concrete--aka a nuclear power plant--from the approximately 2400 pounds of a thin-skinned GA single-engine airplane.
I wish I could agree. Small planes can carry nuclear bombs that could land on nuclear power plants and or their waste fuel storage facilities. The fuel rods at the storage facilities contain cesium 137 that has a half-life of 30 years, is radioactive for 60 years. Most of these facilities contain many more rods than they were built to contain; many store the rods in pools of water. Each such storage facility holds in the neighborhood of 5-12 times the radiation Chernobyl released. Please check out this subject at BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS.
ADS-B....Terrorist's Dream, Security's Nightmare
Must reading for JH and anyone interested in "the rest of the story" is found at http://www.airsport-corp.com/adsb2.htm
A lengthy article with lots of supplemental information.
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wiley42
1 Comment
Citation, please?
Could we get a citation for "...The FAA is requiring ADS-B in the next 5 or 6 years..."? NPRM isn't due until Feb 2007, final rule isn't due until 2009 and the in-service decision isn't due until late 2010 with 100% avionics deployment by 2020 -- and the FAA is floating those dates only if users of the NAS don't demonstrate active opposition to "avionics related airspace mandates". There's also the unresolved issue of NAS performance failure if the satelite source is used as the sole means of providing ADS-B and a collection of smaller issues revolving around supplier base, spectrum occupancy and a lack of practical experience with TSO-C166A.
All of this stuff (and more) was in the 28 Aug 06 presentation from the FAA; you can find it and more the FAA ads-b website, www.adsb.gov.
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