Election Results Related to the Aviation Industry
For some notable legislators who have supported aviation, there were some close races and some losing their seats. In what media is calling a “stunning” loss, Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), who served as the chairman of the House aviation subcommittee and then of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was unseated by Democrat challenger Stephanie Murphy in a 51.4 to 48.6-percent decision.
Mica, who had served in the House since 1993, had been involved in many issues affecting the aviation industry including airport funding, transportation security and FAA reauthorization. Most recently he backed Rep. Bill Shuster’s (R-Pennsylvania) independent air traffic control organization proposal. Shuster, the current chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and up for re-election, won against his contender with 63.4 percent of the vote.
General Aviation Caucus member Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) won a close race at 52 percent and caucus member, Rick Nolan (D-Minn.), narrowly retained his seat with 50.3 percent of the vote.
In the Senate, aviation subcommittee chairman Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) was upset by opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, by 0.1 percent. Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Thune (R-S.D.), easily won his race with 71.8 percent of the vote.
National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) President and CEO Ed Bolen released the following statement regarding the outcome of the November 8 elections:
“NBAA has always worked with elected officials in both political parties to advance policies that foster the growth of business aviation in the United States. In that spirit, we look forward to working with President-elect Trump, as well as those in his administration, and congressional representatives from both parties, to promote proposals that recognize the industry’s value and protect its interests.”
FAA Gives Update on NextGen ATC
At the recent Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) conference, several Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials who spoke says the agency is making progress toward its ambitious NextGen effort to modernize the ATC system. Some of that progress, as described by Chief Operating Officer of the FAA Air Traffic Organization (ATO), Teri Bristol, is “improving NAS [National Airspace System] performance, delivering benefits through NextGen, and integrating drones and rockets in the airspace system.”
FAA Administrator Michael Huerta stated that there is significant public resistance to redesigning airport arrival and departure routes to take advantage of performance-based navigation (PBN), considered one of the pillars of NextGen – in September, the agency released a 15-year strategy outlining its plan to make PBN the nation’s primary means of navigation. Under the Optimization of Airspace and Procedures in the Metroplex program, the agency has completed projects designed to improve air traffic flows in regions containing multiple large and small airports by redesigning airspace and incorporating satellite-enabled PBN routes and procedures. The public located in these areas has commented on the noise of the airspace redesign incorporating the new PBN routing. Although the navigation paths are more precise, decreasing the area of noise, in many instances the noise is concentrated over a smaller geographic area directly beneath those flight paths. Due to the response, Huerta said that the FAA had “stepped up its public engagement across the United States.”
Among other steps, the FAA recently completed automation system upgrades at 11 of its largest terminal radar approach control (Tracon) facilities, and equipped 48 airport towers to provide text-based departure clearances to pilots under the Data Comm program, which the FAA says is two years ahead of schedule. The Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) program, which aims to facilitate “collaborative decision making” on the airport surface through electronic data exchanges, will start rolling out to airports in 2019.
SAFO Released Regarding Inaccurate ETAs in Oceanic Airspace
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently released a Safety Alert for Operators (SAFO) notifying pilots that time estimates in oceanic control areas may be inaccurate and cause aircraft separation issues caused by Flight Management System (FMS) management techniques and procedures. The FAA determined that the time estimates less accurate than expected, particularly when adverse weather causes pilots to deviate from the planned course.
Per the SAFO:
Air traffic control (ATC) in oceanic CTAs uses a computerized system to maintain air traffic separation. An important part of the computerized process is a flight’s estimated time of arrival (ETA) over each waypoint. In the case of an aircraft equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C), the ETA is calculated by the FMS and downlinked automatically to ATC, but with non- ADS-C aircraft, a pilot position report is required. When avoiding weather, if a pilot deviates from the FMS course, the FMS ETAs may no longer be valid. If inaccurate ETAs are relayed to oceanic ATC, the controller’s calculations will be invalid, and traffic separation cannot be assured.
When deviating for weather in oceanic CTAs, a reliable way to maintain an accurate ETA in the FMS is to create a parallel offset consistent with the cleared deviation, and then maintain that course. If heading mode is used without regard to the FMS course, the flightcrew needs to be aware of the greater possibility of an error in the FMS ETA. In either event, pilot position report ETAs need to be compared with the original operational flight plan ETA and other operational parameters, such as distance to waypoint, airspeed and winds, to ensure timing accuracy.
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