FAA-touted air traffic technology is called unreliable by controllers

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MSNBC

Aug. 17 — A computer tool that the Federal Aviation Administration had touted as one of its most promising emerging technologies to reduce flight delays has failed its most important test. Air-traffic controllers refuse to use it.

THE PASSIVE FINAL APPROACH SPACING TOOL, a computer program that was supposed to make busy airports more efficient by dividing inbound flights more evenly among runways, has been shunned by controllers who say it has never worked reliably, particularly during bad weather when it is needed most. In January, after almost a year of testing the program on live traffic at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, most controllers demanded that it be removed from their radar screens. The program, they said, couldn’t cope with the realities of moving large amounts of traffic under quickly changing conditions. Routine maneuvers, such as briefly turning an airplane from a route to allow for proper spacing, would cause the program to kick that airplane out of its lineup for a particular runway. Major events, such as thunderstorms rolling through, threw the program out of kilter for as long as 20 minutes. Advertisement

Similar problems arose when the FAA attempted to install the system, known as pFAST, in radar control facilities in Southern California, Atlanta, Minneapolis and St. Louis, raising questions about whether it will ever live up to early expectations that it would be a key building block for the future of air-traffic control. So far, $182 million has been spent since 1998 to develop pFAST and a sister technology that is supposed to help controllers keep uniform distances between airplanes. “This piece of technology just doesn’t work, even though some people at the FAA would like to pretend it does,” said Bill Blackmer, director of safety and technology for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. FAA officials acknowledge setbacks with the project, but they say they haven’t given up on it. “Talking about it as promising is something we’re not backing away from,” said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown. The failure of the program to meet expectations underscores the difficulty in designing any new tool for use in air-traffic control. Because airplanes move in three-dimensional space at speeds ranging from 120 miles per hour to almost 600 mph, it is difficult, if not impossible, for software designers to write a program that can react with the speed of the human mind to everything from shifting winds and thunderstorms to controllers who slow down airplanes simply to ease their workload.

The project was originally intended to be used by individual controllers to sort out approaching airplanes during peak traffic hours. The software begins tracking airplanes while they are still about 200 miles away from their destination airport. By the time they appear on the screens of controllers who are in charge of the last 40 miles of the flight, the final approach tool is supposed to attach a proposed runway and landing time to the data block that accompanies each airplane. In practice, the tool has been unable to adjust when pilots are told to make routine changes in heading or airspeed, causing it to spew erroneous information that controllers say is distracting. “Throw in a thunderstorm and you might as well forget it,” said Scott Keller, president of the controllers union at Dallas/Fort Worth. Mr. Keller said he and other controllers at the Texas airport believe that the FAA should send the program back to its developers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where researchers should “call it a learning experience and come back with something we can use.” The pFAST equipment is made by a unit of Northrop Grumman Corp., Los Angeles. Charlie Keegan, director of the FAA’s Operational Evolution Plan, which oversees the installation of new air-traffic technology, said that sending the program back to NASA researchers is a possibility. “We have to examine the questions raised by air-traffic control and see if there is a technical solution.”

Program managers at the FAA’s headquarters in Washington say that pFAST may evolve into a different tool that might still help reduce delays by as much as 5% at major airports. Controllers in the Southern California radar room in the desert outside Los Angeles suggested displaying the information from pFAST on a separate computer screen in the radar room, allowing them to at least be aware of how much traffic is in the pipeline without having to rely on it for each operation.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001

Answers

When are they ever going to learn that tech gimmickry is not going to solve the problem? There is simply too much traffic in too few airports. Only answer is more airports and/or re-routings to smaller airports to spread the load.

-- Big Cheese (bigcheese@multimax.net), August 29, 2001.

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