Aviation Agency Unveils Messaging System to Reduce Delays

by David Porter, phys.org

A system that replaces verbal communication between pilots and air traffic controllers with computerized messages was unveiled Thursday by federal aviation officials, who said the system will reduce delays during weather events and cut down on errors that occur during routine voice transmissions.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently demonstrated its new Data Comm system at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport. As a part of the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System, Data Comm is designed specifically to streamline the process of communicating alternate routes for planes that are awaiting takeoff and heading toward bad weather.

Under the current system, that information is communicated by voice and pilots have to copy down the information and repeat it back to ensure it was received correctly, all before it is even entered into the plane’s computer.

With Data Comm, a process that used to take minutes could now take seconds. FAA administrator Michael Huerta compares the old system to receiving directions from a friend over the phone and Data Comm to a global positioning system preloaded with the address you want. Data Comm has been used on a trial basis at airports in Newark, NJ, and Memphis, TN, since 2013, and about 800 planes currently use the system.

The FAA hopes to have Data Comm implemented at 56 airports by the end of next year, while United Airlines says it hopes to have more than half of its fleet equipped to use Data Comm within three years.  Report

DCL: This is an add-on to NextGen, the FAA’s new system which has been 10 years in development and the costs of which have caused many debates and budget cuts in Congress . I used NextGen as a real-time business event processing example in “Event Processing for Business” (see pp. 206-208),  and that was in 2011!

 

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