Ten years ago, in 2000, a slide presentation at a Washington aviation conference illustrated 12 distinct benefits of ADS-B: the “backbone of NextGen,” as it was later to be called by the FAA. But the presenter wasn’t an FAA official. It was UPS 747 Capt. Karen Lee, and her presentation followed industry ADS-B briefings given over the previous two years by the then UPS director of flight operations Capt. Bob Hilb, who had already demonstrated ADS-B’s capabilities with a group of UPS and FedEx 727s, including in-trail self-separation under radar monitoring at Louisville, at night.
While the FAA launched its Alaska Capstone ADS-B evaluation in 2000, primarily with small commercial aircraft on local flights, UPS was already promoting advanced applications such as self-separation and controlled descents, as well as airport surface safety benefits. Indeed, so convinced was UPS that ADS-B was the system of the future that it soon acquired 2Morrow, Capstone’s ADS-B avionics supplier, and contracted with Phoenix-based Aviation Communications and Surveillance Systems (ACSS) for a suite of ADS-B cockpit applications.
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