The FAA’s ADS-B Program Office has received a stern directive from top management to consult with industry representatives to produce a more acceptable version of its notice of proposed rule-making (NPRM), which in March received an almost unanimous thumbs-down from operators. “I guess the top brass took the program office to the woodshed on that one,” offered one long-time agency observer. “But when you’ve got strong opposition from everybody from the AOPA to the Air Transport Association, you just know something’s wrong.”
The NPRM, for which public comment closed on March 3, drew more than 300 comments from a wide spectrum of interests, from general aviation to the airlines, and from outside organizations such as Eurocontrol and the International Air Transport Association. Essentially, the planned implementation would require ADS-B installations in all aircraft operating in U.S. airspace. However, the mandated equipment would provide only the ADS-B out service, where onboard avionics would transmit signals used primarily by ATC but would not provide pilots with information about other traffic around them. That would remain the function of ADS-B in equipment, a much higher-priced addition that was not mandated.
