SE053: Enhanced Airport Surveillance Equipment

SE053: Enhanced Airport Surveillance Equipment

Status: COMPLETED

Background

This Safety Enhancement develops and implements technology tools, including data link, that will provide and/or enhance airport surface situational awareness to air traffic controllers. Examples of these technology tools include, but are not limited to: Airport Movement Area Safety System (AMASS); Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE-X); Automated Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B); Next Generation Air-Ground Communications System (NEXCOM); Surface Movement Advisor (SMA); and Airport Target Identification System (ATIDS). The strategies for accomplishing this project include:
      - New technology tools will be developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to enable enhanced surveillance, information, communication and conflict detection for ATC operations.
      - FAA and airport operators will provide airport surface surveillance equipment with conflict alerting capability at air traffic control towers.
      - Digital data link capability will be developed and implemented to enable automatic transmission of ATC instructions/information (between the ground and aircraft).
      - Situational Awareness Displays developed in support of the above listed strategies will incorporate industry best practices for computer-human interface (CHI) design to enhance and support ATC decision-making.

Status

The airport surface systems architecture roadmap (Output 1 in the attached Detailed Implementation Plan) is complete.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Low Cost Ground Surveillance (LGCS) technology identified in outputs 2 and 3 was still in research and development when the outputs were suspended. Since the SE was written, there have been other safety initiatives introduced to mitigate wrong runway operations, such as the FAA’s Call to Action on Runway Safety and SE183: Wrong Runway Departures - Cockpit Moving Map Display and Runway Awareness System. Mitigation of runway incursion causal factors from all activities has resulted in a Part 121 runway incursion accident rate today that is low compared to other accident types.

Related Implementation Plan

Detailed Implementation Plan

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