Ninety Seconds At A Time

SECDOT Announces ATC Modernization Plan

As mentioned above, the shenanigans at EWR and Philly prompted U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to present a media event ATC modernization plan on May 8. According to the Department of Transportation’s fact sheet on the plan, “By replacing the current, antiquated system, the FAA will enhance safety in the sky, reduce delays, and unlock the future of air travel. This plan also ensures hard-working air traffic controllers have a system they can rely on and one they deserve.”

That same fact sheet listed the following objectives as critical actions:

• Replacing antiquated telecommunications: with new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites, 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches.
• Replacing 618 radars which have gone past their life cycle.
• Addressing runway safety by increasing the number of airports with Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI) to 200.
• Building six new air traffic control centers for the first time since the 1960s and replacing towers and TRACONs.
• Installing new modern hardware and software for all air traffic facilities to create a common platform system throughout towers, TRACONs and centers.
• Addressing the challenges that face Alaska by adding 174 new weather stations.

Predictably, almost all of aviation’s alphabet soup jumped on board the modernization effort.

Why is this plan necessary? According to the accompanying explainer, “Over the past 15 years, the annual appropriation to the Facilities and Equipment (F&E) account used to sustain and improve most of FAA’s air traffic control infrastructure has remained essentially flat at approximately $3 billion per year. This stagnant funding has caused the FAA to lose about $1 billion in purchasing power due to inflation, as the agency seeks to maintain aging systems and infrastructure and meet ambitious goals to modernize the system for increased safety and efficiency of the NAS. Given the current conditions of the FAA’s infrastructure, we can no longer wait for funding levels to slowly catch up to the need. We need an immediate infusion of funding to address critical infrastructure needs.”

Estimates of how much money this will take are upwards of $30 billion over the next three years.

Link to fact sheet: www.transportation.gov (PDF file)

Parallel runway to be removed.

Management of the Battle Creek Executive Airport (KBTL) want to decommission the 4100 foot parallel runway 23L/5R. The remaining 23R/5L is 10,001 feet.

The shorter runway was added some 20 years ago to attract and support new business and training at the airport. And it worked. The General Aviation News guest editorial by Jason Blair states:

"...over those 20 years, WMU (Western Michigan University), one of the largest collegiate flight training programs in the country, moved all of its operations in 1997 to the airport and significantly expanded its operations with a larger fleet and investment into new buildings since then.

"Additionally, Duncan Aviation and WACO aircraft have significantly increased their business operations and the need for aircraft flight operations at the airport over that time."

Airport management says the runway "is a burden on their staff to maintain it and that plans are in the works to potentially remove it and redevelop the space with additional hangars."

More details on this Miegs-esq development in the full GANews commentary.

GA News: The safety repercussions of removing a parallel runway at KBTL

Long-Distance Engine Maintenance

Remember the pair of Voyager probes NASA launched in 1977? Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent to the outer reaches of the solar system to explore Jupiter and Saturn, then Uranus and Neptune, before heading off to interstellar space. Both spacecraft are still operating, and still sending data back to Earth. Of the two, Voyager 1 is farthest from Earth, about 15 billion miles away.

But at almost 50 years old, it’s been a minute since Voyager 1 saw the inside of a maintenance shop. So it’s not surprising that NASA has had to shut down some of its instruments and equipment as its radioisotope-based power source nears its half-life. Recently, facing a communications outage as an Earth-based transmitter dish went offline for upgrades, NASA engineers managed to revive long-dormant primary thrusters, thereby solving a problem involving spacecraft alignment with Earth so that communications could continue. Basically, they restarted a dead engine by remote control.

The primary thrusters, which control the spacecraft’s rotation and keep it aligned with a reference star, were shut down in 2004 after a power loss to internal heating elements began clogging them. At the time, NASA reverted to secondary thrusters, but the changeover left Voyager I without a backup. Complete loss of the roll thrusters eventually would mean losing contact. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “The team wanted to make sure the long-dormant thrusters would be available when the dish is back online briefly in August, by which time the thrusters currently in use on Voyager 1 might be completely clogged.”

Todd Barber, the mission’s propulsion lead at JPL, said, “These thrusters were considered dead. And that was a legitimate conclusion. It’s just that one of our engineers had this insight that maybe there was this other possible cause and it was fixable. It was yet another miracle save for Voyager.”

Let this be a lesson to all pilots: Even if the action you propose taking shouldn’t restore lost engine power, try it anyway.

Flying into Twentynine Palms

Here's a fun youtube, with commentary and first person video, of a flight into and out of KTNP in San Bernardino County California.

Da Plane, Da Plane!

Suppose for a moment you had almost unlimited resources. Suppose also that you had invested in some aircraft, including a large, fuel-guzzling, one-of-a-kind airplane that had proven unwieldy to operate and maintain. The airplane was such a white elephant that the market for it was almost nonexistent, but you needed to get out from under its ownership costs. What would you do? Maybe donate it to some worthy cause?

If you were the Qatari government, you would offer it to someone with whom you want to curry favor. Welcome to the saga of Qatar’s gift of a Boeing 747-8 Business Jet (BBJ), reportedly configured as an airborne palace and worth $400 million. When offered for sale in 2020, according to Forbes, the BBJ had a master bedroom on its upper deck along with sleeping accommodations for guests and crew. The lower deck features “multiple lounges, a conference room, and cream-and-tan leather seating for up to 89 passengers.”

On May 21, NPR reported Qatar "gave" the airplane to the U.S., throwing the four-engine hot potato to the U.S. Air Force. The airplane presently is in San Antonio, Texas, being fitted with communications and defensive systems, though it reportedly won’t be receiving midair refueling capability. The pair of VC-25A jets—military versions of the Boeing 747-200B, which do have airborne refueling capability—currently serving as Air Force One are due for replacement. To no one's surprise that program has been delayed.

According to Defense News, “There is absolutely no possibility that the Qatari jet could be converted to the currently required configuration of an Air Force One in time for the airplane to be available during this presidential term.” Aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told NPR it could cost up to a billion dollars to retrofit the gift to the standard needed to serve as Air Force One.