FAA Airport Data Information Portal Explained

ADIP, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “Airport Data Information Portal” is a new database designed to increase the accountability and accuracy of private-us airport data in the United States.

This includes heliports, seaplane bases, gliderports, ultralight airparks, balloon bases and soon vertiports. Within this database exists important information critical to pilot preflight actions and in-flight decision making. Things such as an airport’s latitude and longitude, field elevation, runway length or heliport size, known obstructions, lighting, hours of operation, fuel availability are just a few of the important things captured in this database. And, given that every flight planning tool, program and GPS database pilots use today pull their information from this single source database, the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of this data becomes quite evident.

Imagine if you will for a moment, you are faced with an emergency situation. Let’s say you are being surrounded by unforested thunderstorms and you need to get on the ground as quickly as possible because your survival depends on it and your options are few and far between. In an attempt to expedite your recovery, and of course improve your chances of survival, you key in the ‘Nearest’ function on your onboard GPS to identify the closest suitable airfield to your current location. Given your actions, the GPS identifies an airfield a few minutes away that will afford a safe recovery from your current situation within the time critical window you have been afforded. However, upon arrival, you find that the site you expected to find no longer exists or is not where the GPS said it was because the latitude and longitude are incorrect. You have now wasted what little precious time you had, and your emergency situation has now inched its way ever closer to a catastrophic event.

In the past, the FAA was forced to rely on an archaic pen and ink paper system using snail mail in the hopes that they could reach the owners of the airfields and those owners and managers would provide feedback. However, many of these mailings either never reached their destination due to inaccurate names and addresses or they got lost in the shuffle. This created a less than optimum system for keeping track of important airport data for private-use facilities and as such numerous errors exist and persist. It is this situation that the online digital ADIP system was designed to fix. The ADIP system allows airfield owners and managers the ability to access much of their information directly and make changes that will take effect much quicker. That said, it should be pointed out that for safety reasons there are a few data fields that can only be changed by an authorized agent of the FAA.

You may ask the question “why should I care”? One word, “BVLOS”. Ok five words, Beyond Visual Line Of Sight. With the advent of UAS and Drones preparing to operate beyond visual line of sight, i.e., twenty-to-thirty-miles and up, by the thousands, it is critical that your airport information be in the system. If it is not, these aircraft, and their operators, will not know that your airport exists, or where it is, and as such will be unable to avoid it or increase surveillance for air traffic in the vicinity.

If you have never seen the new ADIP system in action and would like to find out how to access it and what it can do for you, go to the website. If by chance you are at Oshkosh this year, representatives from the FAA Airports Division will be on hand to provide demonstrations and answer your questions at the FAA Aviation Safety Center next to the primary control tower on the Oshkosh Airport. Just look for the ADIP booth.

The life you save may be your own.

FMI: https://adip.faa.gov/agis/public/#/public