A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/750462
SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT AIRPORT CAPACITY DECISION SUPPORT TOOL (ADEST): Kr isten Laubach represents the membership as the Articl e 114 Representative for ADEST. Her report is below. Airport Capacity Decision Support Tool (ADEST) experienced a bit of a setback this month. Some operational issues arose resulting in malfunctions in b oth the dev elopment and staging phases. Currently the program has been down for the past three weeks and we are patiently waiting for the program to get back up and running. CAMERAS : Mike Foote (LAX) leads NATCA's wo rk on the Camera Working Group. This gro up discusses the use of cameras on the airport surface and also pr ovides guidance for the Agency. Mr. Foote's update for this week is below. There has still been no official contact or movement on anything to do with cameras. The agency has said the non - re mote tower camera use is on hold pending the outcome of th e virtual/remote tower testing. Having said that, I just spent the week at AFTIL and saw on their white board a list of towers that AFTIL had scheduled for w hat they called a " quick look." The list included much of the C ore 30 airports. A gentleman named Rudi Harmon from AJW C243 explained to me that these airports have had construction projects that have bl ocked some line of sight on the airfield. These quick looks were designed to look back and det ermine the impa cts and possible mitigations. " Mitigations " for line of sight normally starts with cameras in my experience. Doesn't always get there, but normally. I told Rudi about our camera workgroup and the DCPs fo r both the 7110.65 and the .3. I also mentioned the SRM D we completed had identified as a hazard the fact that the FAA was about to create a " camera policy " would certainly lead to the proliferation of cameras in the NAS and then exponentially increase the safety hazard we intended to keep to sma ll localized areas on airports. Our solution was to not allow cameras to be used as long - term solutions on large portions of the airport. This was reflected in our DCPs. I was told that the remote/virtual camera applications seemed to have steam behind them, but the more localized camera as line of si ght mitigations was not moving. He identified the same issue Dale and I had a f ew years back. That being the A gency only has a 7 , 460 process to deal with these issues and between an airport ' s (LAX, JFK etc. ) obvious desire to build what they have proposed and how the Airports division operates, it is insufficient to prevent this on going and ever increasing hazard . It does appear that cameras will continue to proliferate in the NAS minus an actual progra m an d rules. Just by inertia. In many cases they will not use cameras and deal with loss of line of sight with restrictions the airport and users may not like. Air Traffic managers and Facility reps don ' t have the tools to stop, or in many cases ensure , the pl ayers fully understand we do not have a camera program in the NAS and the restrictions they may get could be hard on all involved. My fear is unless something changes in this 7460 - approval process and the FAA finally formalizes our agreed to DCPs, this haz ard is only going to grow.