Reports are circulating that on one of the initial tests of the new computer system planned for the Next Gen air traffic control (ATC) system, the systems failed to identify aircraft properly. The decades-old system had to be re-activated and the state-of-the-art computer was shut down.
At a regional air traffic control center in Salt Lake City, the first of 20 regional facilities where these new computers will be going into operation before the end of 2010, the computers tested by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) failed.
This technology is part of the system that will wean the current air traffic control system from the old World War II-era radar-based system to a modern GPS system. The only problem was that the system had problems identifying aircraft.
Presumably, the aircraft were in the right place and located properly, but the designators were confusing small private planes with large jet aircraft. These kinds of misidentifications can present major dangers, to say the least.
The FAA was hoping that the system would work flawlessly and had planned to keep it running for a longer test. However, the misidentifications forced the controllers working with the system to shut it down and relaunch the old tried-and-true radars.
A Continental Airlines plane that had just taken off from Salt Lake City International Airport was identified as a recently landed Skywest Airlines plane even though there was no similarity between the aircraft, they said.
The controller handling the Continental plane spotted the problem right away, but his workload was light at the time — if he had been busier, the problem might have gone undetected and could have led to dangerous miscommunications, controllers said.
“Nobody knew what caused it and whether it would happen again later on,” said Doug Pincock, the controllers union representative at the Salt Lake center.
The system also misidentified planes at least twice in other recent tests, he said.
It is good to see that the FAA is moving forward on the projects even with its problems with negotiating contracts with the air traffic controllers and the delays in steady funding from Congress because of stalled reauthorization legislation.
The Consumer Travel Alliance is urging Congress to move forward on this FAA Reauthorization Bill as quickly as possible. It seems that all the main players are in agreement that the modernization of the ATC system is one of America’s priorities. However, there are other more contentious issues such as tarmac-delay legislation and airline alliance sunset provisions that are sure to keep negotiators working to reconcile the Senate and House versions of this bill.
Though the Consumer Travel Alliance supports both tarmac-delay legislation and Rep. Oberstar’s airline alliance provisions, let’s hope that these differences are quickly settled or left to be argued next year, so that ATC modernization can move forward with a long-term budget.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
