Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC

WAAS, GPS, NAS, F2K, Y2K - a host of acronyms is buzzing around the head of fledgling FAA Administrator Jane Garvey as she wrestles with the issue of modernising the US airspace system. Five months into her five-year term, a plan is beginning to emerge involving incremental introduction of new technologies and procedures, active participation of controllers and users - and "candid discussions" with the aviation community and US Congress.

Garvey is clearly a consensus seeker. Within a few months of taking office, she had established the National Airspace System (NAS) Modernisation Task Force, with the specific goal of developing a consensus between the FAA and the aviation community on the best way forward. The 14-person Task Force includes representatives of the FAA, Department of Defense (DoD), airlines, manufacturers, controllers and pilots.

The direction in which the Task Force is heading is clear from Garvey's recent remarks that the key elements of the NAS modernisation are "inclusiveness, building blocks and risk mitigation". The FAA is moving towards the incremental implementation of the modernised NAS, to provide benefits to users as soon as possible. Users, meanwhile, are warming to the FAA's Flight 2000 (F2K) plan to conduct a large scale operational evaluation of the modernisation elements. Despite this, achieving consensus may not be as easy as Garvey would hope.

The Administrator faces challenges on the cost, schedule and user acceptance of several elements of the modernised NAS, including the global positioning system (GPS) and wide-area augmentation system (WAAS).

At the same time, the FAA faces continued opposition to user fees as a funding mechanism. To top it all, Garvey is fielding criticism of the agency's failure to react quickly enough to the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem.

The latest challenge to consensus building is George Donohue's decision to leave the FAA after waiting ten months for his nomination as Deputy Administrator to be confirmed by Congress. Donohue, as Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisition, has been leading the NAS modernisation effort. When nominated as Deputy in April 1997, he was viewed as an ideal counterbalance to Garvey's aviation inexperience.

Now Garvey must find a Deputy Administrator with Donohue's technical understanding of the modernisation issues - one who can be confirmed rapidly by Congress - without losing the momentum behind building a consensus on NAS modernisation.

Many of the issues facing Garvey have come to the fore in recent weeks - perhaps a reflection of the realism her approach is bringing to the modernisation process. After years of championing the GPS as the future sole means of navigation, the FAA acknowledged in January that a backup system might be required because of concerns about signal interference and fade.

Donohue says that civil access to a second GPS frequency would help "enormously" in overcoming concerns with unintentional signal interference and signal fade caused by solar activity, but a backup system could be required to protect against deliberate signal jamming. Donohue says that talks with the DoD on providing civil access to the military L2 GPS frequency are now making good progress.

A report on potential backups will be presented in March, but already the airlines have stated their objection to using the existing Loran-C radio-navigation system which is favoured by the general aviation community.

The issue with WAAS has long been that of cost, and a recent increase in projected life cycle costs has undermined the already lukewarm support of users for the system. The FAA delayed submitting a Congressionally ordered progress report, due at the end of January, in a bid to pin down the costs of additional communications satellites required to improve availability. The report, to be submitted by mid-February, will include "full disclosure" of WAAS costs, says Donohue.

The FAA failed to secure initial funding for Flight 2000 in its 1998 budget, but US President Bill Clinton included $90 million for the programme in the agency's 1999 budget request. The US Air Transport Association and Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, although initially sceptical, have spoken out recently in favour of a large scale operational evaluation of the new NAS technologies. Garvey, meanwhile, wants the $400 million demonstration programme to focus on mitigating the risks of NAS modernisation "with measurable goals and full community participation".

After a "lively" Congressional hearing in early February, Garvey acknowledges that the FAA has been late getting started on the Year 2000 problem, and that it "is not as far along as it should be". Progress is now being made, but cost and schedule challenges remain. More than $300 million may have to be found to replace IBM host computers at air traffic control centres if they cannot be made Y2K-compliant.

All NAS mission-critical systems had been assessed by the end of January, and a report on whether the host computers can be upgraded is due at the end of March.

At the same time, the FAA faces the loss of $100 million a year after a US court overturned the agency's first user fee, rejecting the value-based pricing model used to calculate overflight charges levied on aircraft transiting US airspace. With Congress expected to act this year on recommendations by the National Civil Aviation Review Commission that the FAA be funded from user charges, Garvey obviously has plenty of consensus building still ahead of her.

Source: Flight International