A kid in the tower, a pilot without license and other things
On 08/03/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
The unprecedented success of the air transport industry is due mainly to the spectacular improvements in safety booked overt the years. True, the convenience of being able to travel to the other end of Europe for a meeting and back the same day count for a lot, but without the safety factor, few passengers would accept the hassle of endless security queues and legroom appropriate for the shortest 10 % of the population only.
The exemplary safety record is the result of constant vigilance, safety management systems and the responsible attitudes of those working with or around aircraft.
Any disturbance that could negatively affect safety or even the perception of safety would be a disaster to the industry on a scale that would dwarf the effects of the recent financial meltdown in the world.
In a well running system complacency is one of the biggest dangers while it is also one of the most basic treats of the human character. Fighting complacency must be one of the most important items in any safety manager’s kit.
Recently however we seem to be seeing signs of a disturbing trend.
8.33 kHz Channel spacing – what is this?
On 04/03/2010, in Buzzwords explained, by steve
The radio spectrum, a scarce resort
One of the most basic activities in a cockpit is tuning the radio to the assigned frequency of whoever we want to talk to. Contacting ground control, the tower or one’s own company is done by turning a few knobs until the right numbers show in the radio control panel display and we can talk.
Air traffic controllers see the same thing slightly differently. They do not normally have to tune their radios. The proper frequencies for their sector or other working position are pre-set and need no further attention.
With the matter being so pedestrian and the actions so routine, few of us realize that the ability of pilots and controllers to talk to each other is in fact dependent on one of the scarcest resources in aviation, namely the radio spectrum allocated to aviation use.
Many other disciplines have their own radio spectrum and we all guard jealously what we have been given and for good reason. With so many users wanting to use the radio waves, the incumbents better watch or the use it or lose it principle kicks in. Luckily, the frequencies most widely used by aviation (118 – 137 MHz) are not coveted so strongly by others. Our problem is different but not in the least less serious.
Interesting people, unusual flight plans…
On 03/03/2010, in Interesting people, by steve
Mike Russo – Looking back on a lifetime in aviation
Mike, lead principal engineer and Executive Secretary of the AEEC has recently retired from Aeronautical Radio Incorporated (ARINC).
What were you dreaming of becoming when you were a kid?
I grew up in a rural family with limited means and there were not that many people around me who could have served as examples for choosing a profession. But I did want to find a respected profession, doing respected work. At one point I took an aptitude test and it showed that I would make a good mechanical engineer. My focus from then on was on science subjects. An uncle was a tool and die maker and I got a lot of support from him.
What moved you to become part of the aviation family?
I went to Lake Michigan Community College for an associates degree as a technician and then Michigan Technological University where I got my Bachelor’s Degree… Afterwards I got a job with Westinghouse and in 1971 they sent me to the FAA Academy to learn about the principles of ILS. On my return, I worked on various ILS projects including ground site design and field work for ILS installations including flight testing with the FAA.
Continuous Descent Operations (CDO) Manual from ICAO now available
On 26/02/2010, in Bookshelf, by steve
ICAO has made available an unedited, advance version of the Continuous Descent Operations (CDO) Manual as approved, in principle, by the Secretary General. Although the final, edited version may still undergo editorial alterations, the substance should stay the same.
The purpose of this Manual is to provide guidance and harmonize the development and implementation of continuous descent operations (CDO). To achieve this, airspace and instrument flight procedure design and air traffic control techniques should all be employed in a cohesive manner. This will then facilitate the ability of flight crews to use in-flight techniques to reduce the overall environmental footprint and increase the efficiency of aircraft operations.
The generic term “continuous descent operations”, has been adopted to embrace the different techniques used to maximize operational efficiency while still addressing local airspace requirements and constraints. These operations have been variously known as, continuous descent arrivals, continuous descent approaches, optimized profile descent, tailored arrivals, and 3D/4D path arrival management forming part of the business trajectory concept.
Continuous descent operations (CDO) is one of several tools available to aircraft operators and air navigation service providers (ANSPs) to increase safety, flight predictability, and airspace capacity, while reducing noise, controller-pilot communications, fuel burn and emissions. Over the years, different route models have been developed to facilitate CDO and several attempts have been made to strike a balance between the ideal fuel efficient and environmentally friendly procedures and the capacity requirements of a specific airport or airspace.
747
On 25/02/2010, in Bookshelf, by steve
By Joe Sutter with Jay Spenser
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-088241-9
For some time now we could read a lot about the development problems afflicting the latest big aircraft types. Just think of the Airbus A380, the 787 or the A400M military transport. Proud projects yet they started life with what appears to be more than their share of setbacks. Perhaps it is now the time to read something about the 747, the “Queen of the Skies”, the aircraft on which at one time Boeing had bet the future of the whole company… Was her birth any smoother?
There is no better guide to lead you through those exciting years than Joe Sutter, one of the most celebrated engineers of the twentieth century and the person who had spearheaded the design and construction of the 747.
747 size aircraft are commonplace today but when Boeing started building the first 747, it was bigger than anything ever built before and needed the world’s largest workshop just to be put together. Everything about the 747 was big including the larger than life personalities who were involved in or influenced this magnificent project.
It was far from smooth sailing and tensions between people as well as technological challenges all added up to make the project leader’s life difficult.
But Joe Sutter and his brilliant team of engineers carried on, never faltering, never doubting, pushing and pulling and even performing the odd miracle when that was called for.
If you think the 380 or the 787 had problems, what about reading that the third 747 in the flight test program actually crashed in Renton two weeks before the FAA was scheduled to certify the 747? Ok, it was pilot error and there was little damage but still… As it turned out, the FAA was actually very impressed by the crashworthiness of the aircraft and the incident had no adverse effect on certification.
With so much in Seattle hanging on Boeing’s future, the Sutters’ friends kept bugging Nancy Sutter, Joe’s wife, whether she believed her husband knew what he was doing… When the 747 first flew on February 9, 1969 Nancy was standing near the runway’s edge at the calculated unstick point, rewarded for all her patience with the best view of this historic event.
After reading this book, you will see big aircraft in a totally different light. Highly recommended.
Order your copy here.
Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – History and current practice
On 09/02/2010, in CDM, by steve
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The concept of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was originally defined in the United States by a group of airlines, led by US Air, in response to what the airlines perceived as inadequate co-operation between airports, the FAA and the airlines themselves. They formed the so called CDM Group, members of which visited several airports with traffic flow problems and analysed the reasons.
Significantly, they discovered that in many cases the reasons were in fact quite trivial. In one case, a missing telephone connection between the FAA tower and the Delta ramp controller was found to be at the root of major departure delays; in another case the “secret” nature of cancelled flights was found to be the cause of unused slots at an otherwise seriously congested airport.
The CDM Group in its original reports had actually established three of the most basic rules of CDM which remain valid to this day even if, unfortunately, in some cases they are being ignored. The three rules are:
• Most problems have simple causes with simple solutions
• Better information sharing eliminates a very large proportion of the problems
• CDM can only be successful if trust is established between the partners as the first step
Although the CDM Group did at first address problems at airports (Atlanta and Philadelphia) when the FAA embraced the concept, they focused on applying it in the en-route environment. This was a natural consequence of the US scene where capacity constraints were present en-route while airports were almost all free flow at the time. Nevertheless, US airports got involved in CDM early as a result of the FAA’s ground-delay concept. The value of information sharing was shown right from the start. Just by being better informed, airlines were able to respond to the restrictions in a much more efficient manner. The initiative in the early 1990s called FAA/Airline Data Exchange (FADE), supported among others by Northwest Airlines, can be seen as the direct forerunner of what evolved into the US CDM project of to-day.
FAA Call to action on airline safety and pilot training
On 03/02/2010, in SKYbrary News, by steve
News from EUROCONTROL’s aviation safety knowledge base SKYbrary
On February 12, 2009, a Colgan Air Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, operating as Continental Connection Flight 3407, crashed while on approach to Buffalo, New York.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted a public hearing on this accident from May 12-14, 2009. During that hearing and subsequent congressional hearings on June 10 and June 11, 2009, several issues came to light regarding pilot training and qualifications, flight crew fatigue, and consistency of safety standards between operators.
In response to this information, on June 15, 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt initiated a Call to Action on Airline Safety and Pilot Training for FAA, air carriers, and labor organizations to jointly identify and implement safety improvements, and an action plan was published on 24 June 2009.
The FAA has just published a progress report entitled FAA “Answering the Call to Action on Airline Safety & Pilot Training”.
You can get the progress report here.
Global AIM Congress – 22-24 June 2010, Beijing, China
On 25/01/2010, in Events, by steve
The Global AIM Consortium is pleased to announce that the 2010 Global AIM Congress entitled “Building the Future – The transition from AIS through AIM to IM” will be held in Beijing on the 22-24th June 2010. As usual, workshops will be held on the Monday ahead of the Congress, 21 June 2010. The Consortium is working closely with the Air Traffic Management Bureau of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China which has generously agreed to sponsor this event.
There are a number of key objectives for the Congress. It will review the progress made in implementing the recommendations of the Madrid Congress of 2006 and then it will begin to explore the future direction of the provision of aeronautical and other information essential for the implementation of the ICAO Air Traffic Management Concept. The aim is to identify the key requirements for the future system which will draw heavily on the work of the European SESAR and US NextGen programmes. Senior managers from ICAO, ATMB, Europe and the FAA have already agreed to speak.
2010 ICNS Conference – Call for participation
On 20/01/2010, in Events, by steve
The 2010 Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance (ICNS) conference will take place on May 11-13 2010 at the Westin Washington Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon, VA. The conference this year is by-lined as “The challenged of NextGen, new issues for aviation’s future”.
The Conference, jointly sponsored by government, civil and military, and industry, addresses long term research and development and early implementation of integrated CNS technologies needed to Enable NextGen.
The Conference is focused on providing understanding of CNS programs, longer term plans, standards development (RTCA, etc.), research, ICNS technologies, and the New Issues for Aviation’s Future that accompany NextGen.
Each day begins with a plenary session. Tuesday morning is all about Accelerating Implementation and Integration (I&I). Wednesday morning will focus on Interagency Systems Transformations, addressing multi-agency (DoD, DHS, and FAA) information sharing, and policies and procedures needed to insure airspace security while improving the support for each agency’s primary mission. NextGen Beyond 2018 is the topic for Thursday’s plenary.
Every afternoon, parallel technical sessions will be held on specific ICNS topics.
NOTAM goes digital
On 06/01/2010, in SWIM, by steve
What is a NOTAM?
A NOTAM...
There are a few things in aviation that have survived over the years with so little change as the NOTAM, in spite of its numerous, known shortcomings. NOTAM is a quasi-acronym for Notice to Airmen, a system of providing aeronautical information introduced well over 60 years ago.
NOTAMs… we have all seen them, worked with them and think we know them. But do we really?
...and the cranes it refers to!
A NOTAM is a text message, constructed using a code defined by ICAO and distributed via the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunications Network (AFTN). It informs the recipients of immediate or temporary changes to the air navigation infrastructure, both airport and en-route. As an example, if a runway or part of a runway is temporarily closed, this will be announced in a NOTAM. There are several types of NOTAM but their essence and purpose is the same: provide vital information to airmen in a timely manner. In fact, the NOTAM is the middle part of the layered legacy system of information provision: the AIP (Aeronautical Information Publication) describes the big picture and the permanent situation; NOTAMs bring information about sudden/immediate changes and temporary changes that will exist for a short time only; and the operational radio, including broadcasts like the ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service), that announce sudden changes and continue to do so at least until the information is also available in a NOTAM.
The NOTAM offices of the world’s States are a legendary bunch of very independent minded experts, who know very well how important their job is and who tend to be slow with changes, however useful, lest the carefully thought out system fail in its purpose. Frustrating on occasion, it is hard to blame them for being careful.
Pilot fatigue – The views of the Flight Safety Foundation
On 25/12/2009, in View from the left seat, by pbn
The issue of fatigue in the cockpit, and outside it among maintenance personnel for example, has been on the agenda for some time now and
things were brought to a head by the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo on Feb. 12, 2009.
Predictably, the reactions are varied and range from the studied to the opportunistic. Clearly, something as complex as human fatigue can only be addressed on a scientific basis applied in the specific aviation context. Traditional ways of regulations and compliance monitoring may also need to be reviewed before they are pronounced as the solution to this very real problem.
For some airlines fatigue risk management is nothing new and they have long ago adjusted their crew scheduling and fatigue reporting practices to mitigate the risk as much as possible. For others, the task is still looming large.
Mr. William R. Voss, President and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation gave a testimony on 1 December 2009 to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Aviation Hearing on Aviation Safety: Pilot fatigue.
He too argues for a balanced and well reasoned approach, something that is scaleable to suit both major and smaller operators and points out that some measures that do not necessarily require a regulatory approach can be implemented now. Which is not to say that there is no need for new rules that reflect the latest scientific knowledge about fatigue and the risks it entails.
You can read the full text of the testimony here.
EUROCONTROL winter feature – the digital SNOWTAM trial
On 07/12/2009, in SWIM, by steve
Winter is coming…
After the earlier digital NOTAM trials organized by EUROCONTROL and the FAA, it is now time for trials with the digital SNOWTAM. The trials will run until March 2010 with the participation of several airports, airlines, NOTAM offices and the European AIS Data Base (EAD).
BluePower CDM Toolbox– The perfect tool for airport Collaborative Decision Making
On 31/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
Originally Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was a simple concept indeed. Realizing that a lot of problems in air traffic management came from the simple fact that many of the partners simply did not talk to each other, it was easy to reach the conclusion: make them work together, stop decisions being made in isolation, improve decisions by making them the result of a collaborative endeavor.
It was not easy at first and people invented all kinds of reasons for not doing it… most of the reasons given were simply not valid. We will be bringing you a short history of CDM later and you will see why I am saying this. To a large extent thanks to a small group of enthusiasts (the famous original CDM group in the US), more and more airlines and airports realized that working together was far more beneficial than hiding behind ill-defined concepts of commercial sensitivities.
Station calling – Visiting StuckMic
On 29/10/2009, in Station calling, by steve
Our concept for Roger-Wilco is to make it different. You will judge how successful we are in this endeavor but in the meantime we like to believe that we provide value to our readers in a form and with content that does distinguish us from other, aviation related sites.
This does not mean that we consider the other, sometimes long established, sites inferior in any way. Far from it! We believe that most of them are excellent and provide real value in their specific areas of interest. We also believe that Roger-Wilco is then more of a complementary place, the watering hole you will visit to read up on interesting stories and subjects of common interest either before or after visiting other sites.
In this spirit we are starting a new category called “Say again” where we will bring you news about and from those other places so that after having visited us, you may fly around the internet with a bit more focus. This is in fact the second article in the series; the first one was about an aerial photography site which you can read it here.
But now I would like to tell you about my visit to StuckMic, a site that claims to be the biggest ATC site in the world. Their choice of name is really cute. A stuck microphone (that is what “stuckmic” means) is something both pilots and controllers know all about and hence it is easy to remember.
A short (unofficial) history of air/ground digital link – 2
On 18/10/2009, in Buzzwords explained, by steve
The clash of VDL Mode 4 and VDL Mode 2
Following years of testing and discussions on countless forums, VDL Mode 2 was emerging as the solution that, combined with the ATN protocol, could support the initial implementation of Controller Pilot Digital Link Communications. There was nothing else it could do but it had a huge advantage over everything else. There was agreement that it would do the trick! Some people tended to consider this virtue as being of little value but in fact it was as important as the link’s ability to perform. Achieving consensus on the scale needed to decide which link to use is an epic hurdle and when agreement is there, it should not be put in danger.
But that is exactly what was being done by the promoters of another technology that goes under the name VDL Mode 4. VDL Mode 4 can do everything, they claimed… It does voice, text messages and also ADS-B! Most of the claims were of course true and the initial hiccups with the system were no reason to discard it. Yet it never made it into the mainstream and the hard push did only one thing: delayed the inevitable, the final agreement on Mode 2. VDL Mode 4 lacked the most important element: industry agreement for implementation.
New directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – a detailed example
On 13/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
If you have read my article on the New Directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), you will be interested in this narrative description of the envisaged working of the expanded CDM concept. I do strongly recommend that you read the New Directions article first!
The example used is that of a departing flight. It is not a formal use-case as such and it focuses on the most important new features only. The scenario does not aim to be all-encompassing but sufficient detail is provided to enable readers to get a better understanding of the novel applications of CDM. A number of new services are mentioned in this scenario which are in addition to those mentioned in the original article. Their role is self explanatory but if you have any question, please write a comment and I will explain things in more detail.
Click here to read the full article
SWIM in the USA
On 17/09/2009, in SWIM, by ahmad and lesley FAA
System Wide Information Management (SWIM) is an advanced technology program designed to facilitate greater sharing of Air Traffic Management (ATM) system information such as airport operational status, weather information, flight data, status of special use airspace, and National Air Space 
(NAS) restrictions. SWIM will support current and future NAS programs by providing flexible and secure information management architecture for sharing NAS information. SWIM will use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software to support a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that will facilitate the addition of new systems and data exchanges, and increase common situational awareness.
How did SWIM originate?
EUROCONTROL initially presented the SWIM concept to the FAA in 1997, where it has been under development ever since. In 2005, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Global Air Traffic Management (ATM) Operational Concept adopted the SWIM concept to promote information-based ATM integration. SWIM is now part of development projects in both the United States (NextGen) and the European Union (Single European Sky ATM Research – SESAR).
Banging on an open door?
On 22/08/2009, in SESAR's Palace, by steve
The SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) has just announced that they are launching a specific initiative on flight tracking in oceanic and remote areas. The call for tender (OPTIMI) is meant to select contractor(s) for the performance of a study and flight demonstrations – co-funded for a maximum amount of € 360.000 -aimed at demonstrating the feasibility to implement oceanic tracking services in the Atlantic at a reasonable cost and within a limited timeframe (2010).
The SESR JU was tasked to analyse the issue and provide recommendations on the way forward in response to the apparent lack of appropriate tracking over remote areas that came to light following the recent tragic accident over the South-Atlantic.
As I read this news in my office, one of the several computer screens was focused on the Pacific Ocean, showing the Western Coast of the US and the Hawaii Islands. All traffic was clearly visible and by pointing on any of the blips, I could immediately bring up corresponding, real-time flight data, including heading, level, speed, departure and destination aerodrome and the filed track was also presented.
Scrolling the map to the North Atlantic, as I briefly looked at traffic in and out of Paris, two questions came to mind.
