Group Awarded Honor Over Airbus A380, Falcon 7X
The National Aeronautic
Association (NAA) announced at its Annual Spring Awards Luncheon
last week the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B)
Team of public and private sector groups has been selected as the
recipient of the 2007 Robert J. Collier Trophy.
The Collier Trophy will be presented at a formal dinner on
Thursday, June 12, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington,
VA. Government and industry leaders who have collaborated for
nearly a decade will be honored "for conceptualizing, developing,
and the initial implementation of Automatic Dependent
Surveillance-Broadcast, the next generation performance-based
air-ground, ground-air, and air-air surveillance system," states
the NAA.
"ADS-B is a ground-breaking effort for next-generation airborne
surveillance and cockpit avionics," noted NAA Chairman and Collier
Selection Committee Chairman Walter Boyne. "Its implementation will
have a broad impact on the safety, capacity and efficiency of the
national airspace system."
NAA categorized ADS-B as "the vision of many prestigious
aviation organizations and individuals who both recognized its
potential to dramatically improve the current aviation system and
who also worked tirelessly for its adoption as the first phase of
building the Next-Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen)."
Among those groups are the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association,
the Air Line Pilots Association, the Cargo Airline Association,
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Federal Aviation
Administration, ITT Corporation, Lockheed Martin, NASA, the MITRE
Corporation, UPS, ACSinS and many others.
"We were very pleased with the nominations that came to NAA for
the Collier Trophy this year," said Jonathan Gaffney, President and
CEO. "I believe the importance of the trophy is best reflected in
the quality of the nominations – and we had some outstanding
nominations and presentations."
The Collier Trophy is awarded annually "for the greatest
achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect
to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or
space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated
by actual use during the preceding year." The list of Collier
winners represents a timeline of aviation, as many of the awardees
mark major events in the history of flight.
In addition to the winning ADS-B Team, other nominees for the
2007 Collier Trophy includes Dassault Aviation, for its new Falcon
7X bizjet; the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST); Epic
Aircraft's VLJ team; the Airbus A380 superjumbo; and the Air Force
Space Command’s Space Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS) highly
elliptical Orbit (HEO) Development, Test and On-Orbit Operations
Team.