Money And The Origins Of ADS-B

I get AOPA's point about the latest way enterprising folks are cashing in on the vast taxpayer funded data stream that is ADS-B but the umbrage and high dudgeon being expressed is a layer too thick.

We all saw this coming and in fact the use of ADS-B as a billing tool has been around for a while. And it's not just hitting up the idle rich that we all know the GA crowd to be. A few months ago we had a story about a Colorado airport matching ADS-B tracks with decibel readings to nab noise violators.

But the latest kerfuffle surrounds a company outside of aviation that has written some software that tracks aircraft movements and can punch out an invoice to the registered owner of the aircraft. It's ideal for assessing landing fees and the company, Virtower, is flogging it to airports in Florida. I get the attraction. It's like a maintenance-free money spigot for airport authorities, but its automated nature makes it even more loathsome than GA landing fees in general so there is a negative PR downside.

So, AOPA's written the FAA (cue the high dudgeon and umbrage) and offered to help it write new rules that would ban this and other uses for ADS-B tracking that aren't directly related to flight safety.

Ahem. I guess tackling the landing fee collection business would be a good place to start. "The fact that ADS-B data is being utilized as a revenue-generating mechanism is simply wrong and has the potential to create safety issues due to a reduction in pilot training and operational pilot currency," AOPA President Mark Baker said in his letter to FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker. "In addition, while over 60% of GA aircraft have been equipped with ADS-B, this practice could discourage those who have not yet done so."

What's next? How about those pesky celebrity flight trackers? Taylor Swift might be happy, but some lesser lights actually ensure their movements are well known, and then there's that pesky First Amendment.

All right, how about FlightAware? It's hardly an aviation safety site unless you count dodging airports with weather delays, but it undeniably offers a host of business analytics services that it gets paid millions of dollars a year to provide. The bonus is that anyone can see how delayed their grandma's flight is now.

Then there are folks like me. Although ADS-B is not required for the Cessna 140 that I share with two partners in Canada (nothing below 12,500 will have a mandate for the foreseeable future), we're all looking forward to having the uAvionix tailBeaconX in the plane.

Full disclosure is that uAvionix supplied the hardware and we're covering the installation. We will be doing a full video and written assessment of the installation and performance for AVweb and our sister publication Aviation Consumer because of the unique design of the system. The transmitter replaces the tail beacon, giving its two antennas a clear view of ground stations used in the U.S. and the satellite receivers used in Canada.

Not only will it cover any future mandates for the thicker air we favor, it makes us legal to go anywhere in the U.S., which is only about 100 miles from our airport.

But there's a bigger reason I'm anxious to get the install complete (we're waiting while a shop makes us a wiring harness that will keep things tidy). I have a deal with my wife that I call her as soon as I'm out of the plane after flying. It's not her thing and she is rightfully concerned for my welfare whenever I commit aviation. After we're sending out ADS-B, I can set her up with any of a dozen tracking websites and she can follow along if she wants to. She'll also be able to tell the authorities exactly where the breadcrumbs stop if they end away from an airport.

So, there are undeniable benefits to knowing exactly where aircraft are at any time that go beyond keeping them from banging into each other. But AOPA's indignation that such noble intent has degenerated into crass commercialism got me curious about how we got to this point.

I combed (well I had our robust search function comb) the archives for ADS-B origin stories and I found the story, from January of 2003, where we covered the first FAA certification of ADS-B. Indeed, it was invented to keep airplanes from trading paint but even so there was a pecuniary basis.

A practical application for ADS-B was developed by United Parcel Service's tech development subsidiary UPS Aviation Technologies (UPSAT) in Salem, Oregon. The intent was to allow tighter separation between aircraft in bad weather with the goal of keeping the endless conveyor of parcels at its shipping centers processing as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The certification allowed installation of ADS-B on all 107 of UPS's Boeing 757s and 767s and the company said it expected a 20% efficiency boost within three years. I'm not sure if the payoff was that big, but ADS-B certainly caught the attention of the aviation world, including the FAA. You could practically hear the gears grinding in this comment. "ADS-B technology in itself crosses a lot of boundaries for us," FAA spokesman Charles Keegan said at the time. "It could have a potentially huge impact on capacity." 

It wasn't long after this that the then-Bush administration started floating trial balloons about ATC privatization and user fees. Coincidence? I don't think so. Establishing a tracking and billing system was a huge hurdle in a fee-for-service system and UPS had just handed them the raw data stream.

There was another heavyweight that took notice. Five months after ADS-B was certified we carried a story announcing the acquisition of UPSAT by Garmin for $38 million. The name was changed to Garmin AT and the company retains a commanding presence in Salem with hundreds of people working on the latest and greatest.

But it's all about safety, right? Money has absolutely nothing to do with it.