FAA Looks to the Heavens to Improve Air Safety

The future of airline safety is in outer space, with satellites and global positioning systems, the Federal Aviation administrator (FAA) said Friday.

Marion Blakey told a City Club audience that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) traffic control system - with satellites and a form of a GPS - is still in the developmental stages.

She said ADS-B is one way the FAA is trying to make the skies safer and the air traffic control system cheaper.

The new system would beam information about sky traffic, as well as weather patterns and even information about the terrain, to pilots as well as controllers. The system is being tested in both the United States and Australia, but would work only if every aircraft was equipped with it.

Blakey said the administration must first get costs under control before moving on to develop the system.

On another front, the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association are in messy contract negotiations, with Congress trying to decide if legislators should step in.

The impasse went to Congress after talks broke down. Congress has 60 days to order a return to the bargaining table, or binding arbitration. If Congress does nothing by June 5, the FAA's final contract offer goes into effect.

The last contract is complex, but a main feature is that wages for new controllers would be about 30 percent lower than the current force. The FAA insists that the new contract provides raises to current controllers. The union says it means wage reductions.

There were several NATCA officials at the luncheon, but they did not speak or ask Blakey questions, on the advice of their national leadership.

Earlier Friday, the union members leafleted Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and other airports around the country, urging people to support the controllers in the contract talks.

One member in the City Club audience asked if the FAA was "continuing the assault against the controllers that was begun by Ronald Reagan" when he fired striking controllers in 1981.

Blakey said there was no "assault" going on, just business.

Blakey said that even though an estimated 4,000 controllers are eligible to retire by the end of next year, the FAA was prepared to deal with replacements. She insisted that even though 4,000 could retire, the FAA believes a little more than a thousand will actually do so in 2007.

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