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.

FMI: www.adsb.gov, www.naa.aero