Karen Walker/ATLANTA
THE OLYMPIC FLAME has been extinguished in Atlanta, Georgia but among the many legacies, which the host of the centennial Games will have is that of having been pioneer site for a new form of urban transport which combines helicopters and satellite-navigation technology.
The Atlanta Short-haul Transportation System (ASTS), which became known during the Games as Operation HeliStar, has proved the effectiveness of helicopters as a unique resource for use in unique situations. The experimental programme has also proved the worth and reliability of the global-positioning system (GPS) to general aviation (GA) and, in particular, to the management of low-level air traffic over large cities.
What started off just 18 months ago as a "-wouldn't it be interesting?" exercise snowballed into a multi-million-dollar operation combining the resources of the US Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, the Helicopter Association International (HAI), the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and many local organisations.
HeliStar's importance became even greater when, to the complete surprise of everyone involved, its technology saved the day for all planned airborne operations over Atlanta during the Games, including television coverage, after the White House tried to ban all such activities at the eleventh hour (Flight International, 31 July-6 August, P4).
Only the existence of a satellite-based aircraft-tracking system, originally to be used only by the 50 helicopters directly involved in the ASTS, rescued those operations. Hastily produced portable versions of the datalink boxes, used to monitor aircraft from the second they become airborne, were fitted to an additional 40 approved aircraft, and the Games went on - complete with airborne television-overage and VIP transportation into and out of venues.
HELICOPTER SHOWCASE
The ASTS set out with two main goals - to provide a highway in the sky, enabling business to continue within Atlanta, despite predicted heavy road-congestion; and to showcase the use of helicopters as an urban transport system which might be adopted by other major cities around the world.
Fundamental to these achievements was the use of GPS and datalink technology to allow each aircraft in the system to be monitored constantly by a ground control-station and for each aircraft crew to know the whereabouts of other aircraft in the system. Washington-based Arnav Systems and Florida-based Harris, respectively, provided the avionics equipment and controller workstations which made this possible.
The first goal, organisers freely admit, proved elusive because the predicted road-traffic nightmare hardly happened. Resident Atlantans either stayed away from the downtown area during the Games or changed their work shifts. The overwhelming majority of visitors slavishly followed official advice to use the city's light-rail transport system. The result was a staggering reduction in the number of cars on the main highways which feed into Atlanta. "The roads were deserted," says Rick Weiss, manager of the FAA's GA and vertical-flight office. "People were scared away and so we never really had any traffic to speak of."
As downtown businesses realised that they could, for the main part, continue work as normal, the demand for a premium, express-package, service via helicopters slumped. Petroleum Helicopters (PHI), which was contracted to provide a commercial-package and document-transport service, carried around 13,600kg of cargo - down by some 45,000kg from expectations. Bank receipts and cheques made up the majority of the cargo.
The package service was also hurt by last-minute changes in security rules during Presidential visits to the Olympic Games. The US President and his family were flown into Atlanta for the opening ceremonies, landing at nearby Dobbins AFB in Marietta in the Air Force One Boeing 747, before being transported to the downtown stadium. Security forces insisted on temporary-flight-restricted zones being placed over the downtown area during that and other Presidential visits - preventing even the approved ASTS helicopters from entering those areas.
Some businesses, therefore, lost confidence in a service, which was meant to guarantee absolutely on-time delivery, and it was difficult to restore that confidence. "My way of characterising this facet of the operation is to use the term of strategic access," says Chuck Stancil, senior research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which co-ordinated the ASTS. "When we had to shut down because of the presidential visit, it instilled a lack of confidence among users of the system - we had to be able to guarantee access into those prime downtown areas. That, combined with the lack of traffic, provided a disincentive right at the beginning and we never overcame that totally. Use of the system was somewhat dampened by those two factors. The lesson we learned out of that for an urban helicopter system is that some heliports are more strategic than others - access to downtown was most important of all."
TIME-SENSITIVE
Stancil says that HeliStar, which saw 1,100 sorties being flown over four weeks, also highlighted the importance of having back-up crews so that time-sensitive missions are never interrupted. "I still see the potential whereby something like the ASTS is instigated on a less-ambitious scale, providing a time-sensitive service to the banking and international business community," says Stancil. From a technological standpoint, however, there is universal praise for the system. "It has exceeded all of our expectations and run to an almost flawless schedule," says Weiss. "The automatic dependent-surveillance system has worked beyond our wildest dreams - and we have proved that this technology is both reliable and foolproof." Weiss adds that cargo pilots became so used to meeting their day- or night-time schedules that they were disappointed if they were as much as 20s late. "These were highly professional pilots, who all said they have enjoyed working on the project. After two or three days, they had it nailed and they want to see some of this new technology implemented into the real world."
Weiss feels that, in the near term, the avionics equipment, which made the ASTS possible, will be certificated without restriction. For now, the Arnav display supplying information such as local-area maps, weather and the positions of other aircraft can only be installed where it cannot be seen by the pilot. Therefore, each ASTS helicopter carried an observer who watched the display and received or sent text messages from or to the ground station. Initial observations of the equipment in operation indicate that the display is not an undue distraction for the pilot and will improve his situational awareness.
CIRRUS PARTICIPATED
A prototype Cirrus SR20 four-seat light aircraft, which is being developed by Minnesota-based Cirrus Design and equipped with a large Arnav ICDS 2000 display and datalink receivers to relay GPS position data, was also used in the ASTS. Company test pilot Dean Vogel flew the SR20 over the Atlanta area during the Games, receiving information such as weather reports from the ground-control site, and feels that such detailed, easy-to view, data are a safety enhancement, as they provide situational awareness.
Frank Jensen, chairman of the HAI, flew as an observer on some of the ASTS helicopters and was impressed with the reliability and strength of the datalink signals. Jensen, however, would like to see some changes to the symbology - he says that parts of the display were sometimes difficult to see, especially in bright sunlight - and he would like an easier mechanism for sending text messages. ASTS flight-crews had to construct messages by punching a single key until they reached the desired letter of the alphabet, then repeat the process for the next letter. Jensen and Vogel found this a slow and frustrating procedure and suggest that some form of compact keyboard - similar to that of a modern laptop computer - would be preferable.
At the ground control-station, at Georgia Tech in Marietta, each of the 90 aircraft in the system, including fixed-wing aircraft, was assigned a code with which it was tagged for every flight during the project. Once airborne, the aircraft and its identifying tag number appeared on the main screen along with details of its altitude and speed. Using that information, controllers could also ask the computer to predict the aircraft's path and future position over a given number of minutes.
It was this highly detailed and accurate tracking information which finally convinced security officials that approved aircraft, equipped with Arnav boxes which broadcast automatically information on their identities and positions, could be allowed into the areas directly above Olympic venues, where security concerns were most prevalent. The majority of aircraft needing this access were provided by Textron, which as an official sponsor, supplied the resources of three of its major divisions - Bell Helicopter, Cessna and E-Z-Go - for television-camera and VIP-transport services.
Bell hired Helicopters Inc of St Louis, Missouri, to provide flight-crew and ground staff and made a temporarily leased hangar at Peachtree Dekalb Airport, just north of Atlanta, its headquarters. The original plan was for Helicopters Inc to provide crews for the camera ships, with those aircraft equipped with Wescam cameras, and for Bell to provide crews for transportation of VIPs. The FAA, however, ruled that the transportation role was a full Part 135 operation - for which Bell was not qualified - so all flights were put under Helicopter Inc's 135 licence and Bell put its participating pilots through 135 ground school and had its helicopters - mostly 230s and 206s - checked out to Part 135 standard.
O K Moore, Bell's co-ordinator of the Olympics' project, emphasizes that his company's support of the ASTS was total, but that the roles were different. "Ours is a sponsorship programme in which we have provided value-in-kind as a transportation sponsor," says Moore. "You cannot put a dollar value on that, but we viewed this as a tremendous opportunity for the helicopter. We feel that we have done a very professional job and, by working with the ASTS, have also helped the helicopter industry as a whole," he adds.
FEASIBILITY PROVED
Tom Marlow, chairman of the HAI's Olympic Support Committee, says that all data gathered throughout the exercise will be analysed over the next few months.
He feels that among the main lessons already learned are that a scheduled helicopter service within an urban area is technologically feasible and that responsible flying keeps noise complaints to a minimum. Most of the complaints received during HeliStar were tracked to US Customs and law-enforcement-agency helicopters, which were flown into residential areas more often, and at lower altitudes, than the Bell or PHI helicopters.
The ASTS tracking technology, however, enabled controllers to pinpoint the source of any complaints and provide an explanation to the caller - often solving the problem because the caller was impressed with the detailed information supplied.
Source: Flight International
