Capstone Off The Air

[sky37d]

I read in this morning's ANN, that Capstone has been taken off the air at the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center, effective April 24 . There is no is no date to return it to service. http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=2460328b-c0f6-4608-a95c-3568024646a1&

And, in a real hoot, the front page of the FAA website (www.faa.gov) says "ADS-B is the future of Air Taffic Control"

I think the controllers in Anchorage would say it looks dark to me.

 

[Workin'Stiff]

That's really too bad... It seemed that the Capstone project was a very positive step for the FAA... But typical FAA mentality again prevails...

 

[sky37d]

This morning, ANN has an interesting quote from Skip Nelson, Chairman of the Alaska Aviation Coordination Council. He raises the question

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.]"

It is all very interesting to me, in wake of the controller issues that are in the news. If you look at the FAA website, they say ADS-B is the future of ATC, yet, in the one place it's working, they turned it off.

Makes you wonder if they know what they are doing.

 

[Flyerjosh]

Capstone isn't "off the air", just off the scopes for now (hopefully). The way I understand, system is still up and running and can still be used onboard (each receiver interrogates others), so pilots still have traffic avoidance and situational info. The issue at hand is how controllers have been using the info to provide "radar" services.

Apparently they have been using the ADS-B info for vectoring and other IFR services, which I have been told they don't have the approval to do so. To prevent it from occurring, the FAA has removed the ADS-B target info from the scopes.

As a side note, I think I saw somewhere a few months ago that ADS-B is either online or scheduled to come online shortly here in the lower 48 between Georgia and MD (roughly along the Appalachian Mountains).