I'd like to use this post to introduce myself and to define the purpose of this blog. While it may seem odd, the metaphor of the domestication of a top predator is, unfortunately, appropriate for explaining my blogging intent.
To start, I've been in the air traffic control game in one form or another since May 1970 when I first walked through the security gate at ZDC, the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) in Leesburg, VA to start my life as an air traffic controller. From there I had an opportunity to transfer to Washington Dulles (IAD) where, as an “up and down” facility, I could work as both an Airport Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) and a Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) air traffic controller; without a doubt the best job in aviation! Eventually I accepted a position in FAA Washington Headquarters as a procedures specialist in the Terminal Procedures Branch, ATC Procedures Division, Air Traffic Service.
Later I was recruited out of Air Traffic for an R&D program management position in which I both participated in a program called “Automated EnRoute ATC” (AERA) and served as the manager of an embryonic and struggling new program called “Integrated Flow Management” (IFM). AERA’s name is self- descriptive. Unfortunately, even as a purely exploratory research effort, AERA was far too much of a threat to far too many people in the aviation community and was terminated quietly, quickly, and with malice by the then FAA Administrator. To this day any mention of any idea relating to any automation of any ATC tactical function remains strictly verboten, with each additional year adding still more time to the 25 years of already lost research opportunities.
Meanwhile, the original IFM program, an engineering concept linking together various technologies to somehow impact flow management, had no operational utility so I re-oriented the program towards developing automation and communications functions supporting a national traffic flow management concept and renamed it the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS). The ATMS program developed the Aircraft Situation Display (ASD), the ASD to Industry (ASDI) data feed, and the Monitor Alert function. These products and others were developed and deployed under the Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) program. In time the FAA/airline data sharing concepts developed by Michael Wambsganss for the FAA’s Office of Operations Research were incorporated into the ATMS program where they were expanded and deployed as Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). That collection of capabilities is now referred to as the Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS). ‘Nuff about me.
I can remember when I first went “downtown” to the Air Traffic Service in FAA HQ on Independence Ave in Washington, DC. That was in the early 80’s when the Air Traffic Service was the dominant force in the FAA HQ. It was comprised almost exclusively of air traffic controllers, all having wide and deep operational expertise, a deep sense of governmental public service, and a strong loyalty to controllers in the field. It was back when FAA’s own government employees were the leading ATC experts in the world and when contractors were hired as administrative support or to take notes at meetings; clearly that was a very different time on so many levels.
It was also a time when the products of the FAA research and development community had to continually face the aggressive and unforgiving vetting gauntlet of Air Traffic scrutiny, review, and challenge to reach deployment status. Back then Air Traffic was viewed as a pack of arrogant and angry wolves that loved to gnaw on the chops and hides of technical people. I even had one person come to my office and say that he felt he needed a passport to get off the elevator on the 4th floor; Air Traffic territory. But while getting beaten to a pulp every day by roving packs of air traffic wolves may have been a gruesome experience, those technical people (those who survived anyway) transformed the air traffic control process from paper strips, double slashes, grease pencils, and plastic pips into automated flight data processing, NAS Stage A, ARTS, and aircraft data tags with altitude readout. That brutal vetting by operational experts resulted in technological enhancements that worked well and changed the ATC process for the better! That extraordinary trail of accomplishment happened into the '70s and '80s and hasn’t been duplicated since. As a controller, I want to sincerely thank those R&D pukes for their dedication and courage! I also want to apologize for any open wounds or psychological trauma that I may have inadvertently inflicted.
Then along came the Administrator’s famous “Brown Book” that laid out the plan for developing and deploying every technology FAA had in its warehouse; and air traffic resistance was clearly no longer going to be tolerated. At the moment of publication, FAA HQ began its gradual but unrelenting and inevitable slide away from supporting the operational mission of providing the public with safe aviation services and towards a new primary (albeit vehemently denied) mission of awarding and managing contracts. Any remaining wild wolves that didn’t get the message were quietly “relocated” or sent out to toss aerodynamic discs among themselves.
In my opinion, as a result of those efforts to quell mid-level questioning and resistance (which should be considered a GOOD thing in government) FAA HQ is today clearly squandering a one-time golden opportunity known as NextGen. In what appears to be a dearth of air traffic experience or expertise at the NextGen management level (or perhaps the ATC experts simply have limited authority for influencing concepts and design), it’s no wonder that NextGen leadership demonstrates no real understanding of what needs to be done to simply enhance the ATC process, let alone “transform” it. The FAA is promising a fully “transformed” NAS and ATC system by 2025, yet we’re halfway there and no one seems to know where “there” is. Despite that, the level of effort expended to architect, integrate, and perform C/B analyses for some unknown number of undefined automation functions and capabilities has been Herculean! But how do you architect, integrate, and analyze the unknown in any meaningful way?
In the near term, it appears that the selected strategy for dealing with not knowing what to do seems to be to do everything! Hence the multitude of discrete projects that address every conceivable ATC action yet provide no coherent vision of any actual ATC “transformation”. Exacerbating the situation is the absence of a viable population of virtual canis lupis air traffic apex predators to cull out the sick and feeble ideas. It’s amazing to me when FAA people say, and everyone seems to believe, that the path to the operationally utopian world of NextGen is based upon the technical capability to simply broadcast, receive, and display GPS derived aircraft position data.
If the old ATC Procedures Division of the old Air Traffic Service was still around, the video NextGen, Gate to Gate would have NEVER left the building promising such an amorphous, unrealistic fantasy. The FAA has actually set itself up for guaranteed failure. Who DOESN’T think that in 2024 FAA will still be developing requirements, evaluating alternatives, validating models, projecting costs and benefits, and conducting human-in-the-loop demonstrations of decision support tools that make recommendations to air traffic controllers – who will still be solely responsible for providing aircraft separation assurance? I look at the FAA HQ now and . . . well it’s hard to look at FAA HQ now and not feel a certain sadness to see it as an unfocused, bureaucratic, hollow shell of what it used to be not so long ago.
The reason for this blog is clear (at least to me): I’m so frustrated with and disappointed by FAA HQ that I can no longer stand being quiet!! I have to shoot my mouth off, even if my words are just going to be lost in cyberspace.