If Program Is So Good... Why Is It Suddenly Too Dangerous?

Last week, Aero-News reported on the alarm pilots in Alaska expressed upon learning that the ADS-B program called Capstone had been suddenly suspended, without notice, by the FAA. That experimental program had been in use around the Bethel area in southwest Alaska for five years, to provide weather info, traffic separation, and other services to pilots flying through that busy section of airspace.

The results of the program were nothing short of remarkable: in five years, accidents around Bethel and southwest Alaska, dropped 47 percent compared to pre-Capstone years. On March 24, however, the FAA shut Capstone down altogether.

When news of the shutdown got around, that led to an exchange of letters between Skip Nelson, chairman of the Alaska Aviation Coordination Council, and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey. Those letters were obtained by Aero-News... and we now know more about why Capstone has gone off the glass in Alaska.

"This action was taken as a result of a confirmed report that an improper separation standard was being applied by ZAN (Anchorage Center -- Ed.) between ADS-B surveilled aircraft and radar surveilled aircraft," Blakey wrote in response to Nelson's inquiry into why Capstone had been suspended. "To maintain the target level of safety of NAS (National Airspace System) operations, [removing Capstone] was appropriate pending an assessment of the operational use of ADS-B in this area."

"As a result of this action, there were unintended consequences with the operator fleet monitoring (OFM) and the Bethel display of traffic information in the control tower," Blakey writes. "Upon learning of this, we took corrective action to reinstate the capability of OFM and display of traffic information to the Bethel tower, both of which are now restored."

According to Blakey, that means the Flight Information Services-Broadcast (FIS-B), Air-To-Air situational awareness, and Search and Rescue capabilities of Capstone are back up and running.

ATC controllers, however, still do not see ADS-B-equipped planes on their screens -- and that poses significant safety issues, according to Alaska Business Journal correspondent Rob Stapleton, who says now is the worst time possible to lose Capstone's full capabilities.

"This is the time of year when we have floatplanes that are mingling with twins, that are mingling with Cessna 208s flying 20 hours a day -- because we've got 24 hours of the daylight," Stapleton told ANN. "People are coming and going, we have fishing activities going on, people transferring from one location to the next... gold mining, you name it."

"There is not a time anyplace where you go -- as big as this place is -- that you cannot look up and see an airplane in the sky," Stapleton said.

Stapleton adds a series of meetings are being held in the wake of the news... which may mean Capstone could be back up and running in full by the end of July. For now, however, Stapleton says Alaskan pilots are now more hesitant than ever to add ADS-B systems in their aircraft... given the expense, and that the standards might change, requiring retooling.

And then there's the chance that the FAA could kill the program again... making their expensive transceivers essentially useless. That's a problem Skip Nelson sees, as well.

"The FAA has asked us to modify our aircraft, train our pilots and recognize our dispatch and flight following procedures in order to shift over to what we now know -- based on thousands of hours of actual experience -- to be a significantly better, safer and more reliable system than radar alone," Nelson writes.

"We therefore request that you take... actions on behalf of Alaska aviation safety and the integrity of the Capstone Program, your Flight Plan, and the FAA itself [to restore Capstone.]"

FMI: www.faa.gov