Why is ADS-B Off Track?

Here is a great piece from the Reason Foundation it looks like someone else is paying attention...

That same year, the FAA began its historicCapstone program in Alaska, under which hundreds of mostly general aviationplanes were equipped with the equivalent of ADS-B/In with a cockpit displayof weather and air traffic. With enthusiastic GA support, Capstone is nowbeing expanded to 4,000 Alaska planes. Overseas, IATA loves ADS-B, CANSOloves ADS-B, and aggressive ADS-B programs are under way in Canada,Australia, and Southeast Asia/Pacific.
So how come the FAA dropped the ball earlier this year, by proposing afar-off deadline of 2020 for equipping planes with just ADS-B/Out, leavingthe real benefits (ADS-B/In) for those who must pay for this equipage tosome vague future date? And even though the whole network of ADS-B groundstations will be completed by ITT by 2013? Ive been puzzling over this forseveral months now, interviewing experts and reading extensively. For theUnited States (the lower 48), this turns out to be a massive coordinationproblem, and its one that our politicized FAA is not in a good position toresolve.
First, recall that the business case for ADS-B rests on being able to retirea large fraction of the FAAs huge network of ground-based radars, which arecostly to maintain and would be very costly to replace as they wear out. Butyou cant shut down those radars until everybody in the relevant airspace isequipped with at least ADS-B/Out, so that the ATC system (at least) can seewhere they are. Because aircraft owners balk at being forced to buy andinstall new gear until they get real benefits from it (and this isespecially true of GA owners), FAA felt under strong political pressure tomake the deadline as far off as possible (hence, 2020). And since they knowthat adding a cockpit display unit (to enable ADS-B/In) will be even morecostly, they declined even to speculate on what that deadline will be. So tothe user community, the package spelled all costs but no benefits, leadingto a flood of negative comments in response to FAAs notice.
The places where there is a near-term business case are of two kinds. Mostlythey are in places where there is no radar coveragemost of Alaska, the Gulfof Mexico, northern Canada, over the North Atlantic, in the South Pacific,and over much of Australia. In those locations, ADS-B offers much betterreal-time information for ATC as to where planes are, which means todayshuge spacing requirements can be reduced. That produces user benefits, suchas more direct routings and optimal altitudes for reduced fuel burn, even ifonly ADS-B/Out gets implemented initially.
The other case is cargo hubs (such as Louisville and Memphis), where atnight nearly all the planes are cargo planes. With fleetwide equipage(ADS-B/In), those cargo carriers can increase landing rates enough tojustify the equipage costs.
In Alaska, the main benefit is greater safety, but for that the cockpitdisplay is an integral component. For the initial phase involving severalhundred airplanes, the FAA paid for the ADS-B boxes, and all involvedlearned a great deal from the pilot program. For the planned major expansionto 4,000 planes, FAA is trying to get the state to kick in to pay the largemajority of the equipage cost. The onboard equipment, in volume production,is estimated at $12-18K per plane, of which the owner/operator would bepaying about $2,500. Whether the state funding would be a grant or a loan isstill being debated. FAA will be paying for the bulk of the ground stationsstatewide, as it is doing in the lower 48.
The hugely negative response to the FAAs ADS-B/In equipage proposal hasresulted in the problem being thrown back to the Aviation RulemakingCommittee, a group of aviation stakeholders charged with advising FAA onthis issue. Whatever they come up with this fall will likely influence arevised FAA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), which will probably bereleased early next year. And we can be sure that if some category of userdoesnt like the result, they will complain to Congress, which will try tomicromanage the result via control of the budget process.
Imagine, instead, that a balanced group of aviation stakeholders, instead ofjust being an advisory body, constituted the board of directors of aself-supporting ATO (or AirNav). It would be in the interest of all thoseboard members to resolve this coordination problem, so as to achieve thecost savings from retiring numerous radars before they need to be replacedand to gain the improved safety and capacity resulting from cockpit displaysof weather and traffic. They would therefore have powerful incentives towork out some kind of a deal to bring about rapid implementation of not onlyADS-B/Out but also ADS-B/In. This might well involve the ATO helping some GAusers pay the costs of equipage. But very large volumes of ADS-B boxes anddisplays would also mean large economies of scale in production, drivingdown unit costs, and making the whole endeavor less costly.
It will be interesting to see whether any of the commercialized ANSPs, suchas Nav Canada or Airservices Australia, comes up with such a win-winapproach to rapid implementation of ADS-B.

By Bob Pool
The Reason Foundation