The Colorado Department of Transportation has launched a new technology initiative that will provide enhanced surveillance, and thereby improve access, to its many mountain airports. Currently, IFR flight operations at those locations are limited because surrounding mountains block the line-of-sight signals of the FAA’s ATC secondary (transponder interrogating) radars, preventing the monitoring of lower-level arriving and departing traffic. As a result, arrival rates in instrument weather at some airports using non-radar procedures can be reduced to three or four per hour.
Under a two-phase, $15 million program, the state will install networks of multilateration (MLat) stations in the vicinity of these airports, allowing Denver ARTCC controllers to track aircraft at much lower altitudes. State DOT officials point out that to obtain equivalent surveillance by using a large number of “legacy” radars over the project’s area would be “prohibitively expensive,” since a single radar installation would cost more than $7 million.
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