Capt. Tim Canoll
PRESIDENT
ALPA
AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION, INTERNATIONAL
28
NextGen Now | Summer 2015
Throughout aviation's history, we've made great strides in aircraft
communication, navigation, and surveillance, moving from line-of-sight
bonfires to radio and radar to GPS to airplanes utilizing ADS-B technology.
When we fly over the United States with ADS-B, controllers can tell precisely
what airspace an airplane occupies.
But when we fly across the ocean or over remote areas of the world, everything
changes for you, the controllers who guide us home. We disappear. And
despite pilots having an airplane equipped with ADS-B, when it comes to
your ability to watch us, not much has changed as far as having to make
position reports on HF, ACARS or CPDLC.
And it's not because the technology doesn't exist.
In fact, like NATCA, ALPA recently asked FAA Administrator Michael Huerta
for his continued NextGen support in expanding ADS-B technologies into
oceanic and remote areas by relying on space-based ADS-B receivers. It's
the next logical step in improved surveillance: satellites would host the ADS-B
receivers, much like the ground-based ADS-B infrastructure that shows you
the exact location of our airplanes today.
The benefits are largely the same as well. Implementing ADS-B over these
uncovered areas would increase aviation safety and operational efficiencies
providing global coverage, saving our airlines both time and money. It would
also largely eliminate what's now a big data gap — the size of our oceans! If
the FAA had the ability to fill this gaping "hole," the entire aviation community
would receive better information — real-time aircraft surveillance in oceanic
airspace, implementing the beneficial solutions of global tracking.
Why We Should Add the Oceans to Your Scopes
