The road to ADS-B may well be paved with good intentions, but for operators of smaller aircraft there could be some serious financial potholes ahead. The FAA’s Engineering Branch announced in August that all future ADS-B installations must be performed under individual supplemental type certificates (STC), replacing the earlier ADS-B practice of granting broad field approvals for avionics installations in a variety of similar aircraft models under the agency’s approved model list process.
According to the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA), which represents the nation’s avionics shops, under the new rule individual ADS-B installation costs will at least double for corporate aircraft, and could increase by as much as 700 percent for general aviation. In a letter to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, the AEA stated that the rule “may have an unintended consequence in the industry’s ability to implement your Flight Plan for NextGen.” The association continued, “Without your immediate intervention, this will stall early equipage, delay early implementation and, at the extreme, cause the failure of ADS-B implementation altogether.”
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