Page 25 - Volume 10 Number 12

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. KA
DECEMBER 2016
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 23