11. References

(a) NTSB Aircraft Accident Report No. NTSB-AAR-76-14, Continental Air Lines, Inc., Boeing 727-224, N88777, Stapleton International Airport, Denver, Colorado, August 7, 1975.

(b) NTSB Aircraft Accident Report No. NTSB-AAR-76-8, Eastern Air Lines, Inc., Boeing 727-225, N8845E, JFK International Airport, Jamaica, New York, June 24, 1975.

(c) NTSB Aircraft Accident Report No. NTSB-AAR-78-2, Allegheny Airlines, Inc., Douglas DC-9 N994VJ, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, June 23, 1976.

(d) Decision Paper: Thunderstorm Wind Shear Detection, signed by AOA-1 (McLucas) October 20, 1976.

(e) Letter from Edwin Kessler, Director of the National Severe Storms Labora tory and Environmental Research Laboratories, NOAA, to Director, FAA Wind Shear Program Office, dated July 30, 1976, proposing a system which developed into LLWSAS.

(f) An Operational Application of Mesonet Network for Warning of Translating Surface Wind Boundary Changes, R. Craig Goff, FAA NAFEC, April 1978. (g) Benefit/Cost Analysis of the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, K. Lauterstein, ASP-120, April 1978.

12. Acquisition authorization.

(a) This Acquisition Authorization pertains to the first 60 LLWSAS installations, currently scheduled for funding at the rate of 20 installations per year in fiscal year 1978 through fiscal year 1980. Implementation beyond the first 60 installations will be dependent upon an updating of the benefit/cost analysis after cost figures are further refined.

(b) Installation of an LLWSAS is certified as a valid System Requirement. This certification is granted subject to the implementation parameters of paragraph 10.

(c) Authorization is granted for the LLWSAS program and the first 60 installations, as described herein, to move into an implementation phase as defined in Order 1810.1A, System Acquisition Management.

LANGHORNE BOND, Administrator.

The CHAIRMAN. Next, Mr. Langhorne Bond, Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, and panel along with him from the FAA.

All right, sir, you may identify your associates and proceed, Mr. Bond.

STATEMENT OF LANGHORNE BOND, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION; ACCOMPANIED BY BOB AARONSON, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR AIRPORTS; BILL FLENER, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR AIR TRAFFIC AND AIRWAYS FACILITIES; AL ALBRECHT, ACTING ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT; AND MARTY POZESKY, HEAD, COLLISION AVOIDANCE PROGRAM

Mr. BOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

On my right and your left, Bob Aaronson, our Associate Administrator for Airports; Bill Flener, Associate Administrator for Air Traffic and Airways Facilities; Al Albrecht, is our Assistant Administrator for Engineering and Development, acting; and Marty Pozesky is head of collision avoidance program, technical expert in that field. And I'm the Administrator, of course. We are all from Washington, incidentally. We came out here at the committee's suggestion to talk about the broad issues that are cast here. That is our team.

Now, I have received word that you were hopeful that I could summarize my statement here. I know we're running behind. I'm very happy to do that, Mr. Chairman, if you would be kind enough

to forgive a rather halting pace. But I will do it rather than read it, if you would prefer.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I'll leave it up to you. We are compressed a little insofar as time is concerned. And if you feel that parts of it need to be read, just indicate to us where you are so

Mr. BOND. All right, I will certainly do that, Mr. Chairman. I again beg the patience of the members of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could start in my statement and point out that the FAA was established in 1958 as a result of an incident between two air carriers over the Grand Canyon just 20 years ago that prompted the Congress to establish the FAA to work in this field. Generally speaking, the results in terms of statistical progress are very, very encouraging. We believe we have created at Congress direction what is the safest air transporation system in the world. The statistics are, of course, only of interest in the aggregate and they are no excuse for or explanation of a crash of the kind we have had here in San Diego.

But, nevertheless, up to a 5-year period beginning in 1973 we had a total of 12 midair air carrier collisions. At that point, as our radar control and other devices which are mentioned in the text of my statement were put on stream, we have not had a single one until 1978. So, the record went from an average of more than two per year during that period to one in the period of 6 years. I highlight that not as an explanation of this incident here but to point out that we have been making very steady progress in it, and the passenger fatality rates and other dry indexes which we use to measure our progress in this field indicate a great deal of progress.

Let me talk for a moment about some of the specific steps that the FAA, under the supervision of the Congress and with recommendations from the Safety Board, has taken to get us to where we are today. We believe, to begin with, historically, that the responsibility of the pilot for vigilance in scanning for other aircraft must and will remain a vital part of today's system. But with the recognition that highperformance aircraft are now operating in our system, especially over the past 10 to 15 years, we have built layer after layer of additional protection into it to back up eyeball, as it were, separation. Consider the improvement to the traffic environment, for example. We have extended more and more control over flight operations, and we have done that by progressively expanding positive control airspace, establishing terminal control areas. The first of those was in Atlanta, as you will recall, Congressman Goldwater, in 1968. We now have 21 of those.

We have established an expanded radar control service steadily around the country in the form of what we call TRSA's, terminal radar service areas. We are now blanketed in the United States with positive control airspace from 18,000 feet up to 60,000 feet. With that go the requirement for transponders and so forth. All of these things have been steadily added.

We have required maximum speed operating limits of 250 knots below 10,000 feet. That mitigates the high-performance aircraft speed differential problem. Operations above 12,500 feet today require an altitude encoding transponder with very few exceptions.

I'm skipping over some of the material that has been discussed in the hearing so far we point out our profile descent program, which has both energy-saving and safety impact. Basically, we have tried with

high-performance aircraft, and specifically with air carrier aircraft, to hold them high and to avoid flying around at lower altitudes where both a lot of fuel is used at that altitude because of the requirement for additional lift devices, but also where the mix and exposure to incident with lower performance aircraft is greater. So, the Atlanta example of our profile descent procedures shows that we had achieved. up to a 50-percent reduction in time spent by air carrier aircraft at altitudes below 10,000 feet.

I wanted to touch on conflict alert. The program serves as a backup to our controllers and to alert the controllers to a potential problem in time for the controller to take action to avoid a collision. That capability is already installed and operational at all of our en route facilities, all of our en route centers, and it is being added to all ARTS III terminals in our system.

Minimum safe altitude warning is another feature that we are installing. It generates an alert to a controller whenever a controlled aircraft equipped with altitude encoding transponder is predicted by our computer to go below the safe altitude in that particular sector of the scope that the controller is watching. And it permits us to warn the pilot that they're too low.

Here is a point that I would like to also emphasize, since it came up a few minutes ago with Chairman King. We require today all newly manufactured aircraft to have strobe lights, anticollision warning lights built onto them. That is mandated. Older aircraft are not required to have that on board. They are, of course, phasing out of this system anyway. But, more importantly, their electrical systems are not designed in many cases to handle retrofit in the first instance, so they cannot be retrofitted.

I will touch briefly on the collision avoidance issue. The airborne collision avoidance. Actually, of course, our traffic control system, the ATC system, is in itself a collision avoidance system, but we have found that over the years, the development of a collision avoidance system that provides an independent alert to the pilot has proven to be technicologically elusive. Despite the intensive efforts of the aviation industry and the FAA over a long period of time to build such a system, there still is not a safe, efficient, and reliable collision avoidance system which is available for aircraft use today.

One problem with systems that have been tested in the past has been their inability to interact with the traffic control system and their tendency to emit false alarms on too frequent a basis unless their capabilities are curtailed.

I testified on the subject before the Congress in the past, but I just want to point out that any system that does not take advantage of knowledge that controllers and our computers on the ground have will not know how to make the distinction between an aircraft that is near the aircraft but properly under radar control even though they're close-and one that is not supposed to be there. Therefore, all of the BCAS systems that we have considered will have a fairly high false alarm rate, and will give orders to the aircrew to climb, to dive, to turn left or right suddenly, when in fact they may not be required to do so for safety purposes and when, if they do, they will create other collision potential hazards in closely monitored and high-density air

space.

Anyone who has made an approach to, for example, Los Angeles airport and who knows how those aircraft are safely vectored with highly skilled crews, knows what a collision hazard will be caused, or potential collision hazard, if the crews suddenly deviate one way or the other under those circumstances. We are sufficiently concerned about that to have felt that is a major obstacle that has not been overcome by any system except the one that we now think is the best long-term hope, and that is our DABS system, which we are in the process of developing.

Incidentally, the technology to implement the DABS/ATAR system, which is covered in my statement here, is based on the use of microcomputers. Their development is a very recent phenomena. It was only last May, I believe, the technical feasibility of a system using such computers was in fact confirmed by a technical report.

One of the major concerns of mine has been the promotion and expansion of reliever airports. I have been discouraged at the progress that the FAA and all of us in the community have been able to make in the expansion of reliever airports. Our new ADAP bill that we will submit to the Congress, to the two subcommittees that you gentlemen head, will provide for additional funding levels for reliever airports in the years ahead. But the problems that exist in these areas go, I must say, well beyond the problems of money. It is basically a communityacceptance problem, and I am sorry to say there are very few communities in metropolitan areas that are very anxious to have reliever airports in the neighborhood; and all sorts of environmental suits, noise, and citizen objections have been raised as obstacles to the implementation of a good reliever airport program. Nonetheless, we believe that it needs additional funding, and we would continue to promote it as best we can.

Now, Mr. Chairman, that review, coupled with my statement, brings me to where we are today. We are about to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking, which I alluded to in testimony before the Congress not long ago. It will reduce the floor of the Continental and Alaskan positive control area to 12,500 feet from its present level of 18,000 feet. Within this airspace from 12,500 feet to 18,000 feet, VFR traffic, which would be covered by a new regulatory concept referred to as Controlled Visual Flight, would be required to comply with air traffic clearances and instructions and maintain applicable VFR weather minimums at the same time. So, in essence, from 12,500 feet upward, all aircraft would be under positive control.

Another key feature of this notice of proposed rulemaking, which will be out probably in the month of December, would be to raise the ceilings of the terminal control areas, which now are generally at 7,000 feet, all the way up to 12,500 feet. This would, in essence, provide for the elimination of the gap between the top of the TCA and the bottom of the currently controlled area. Positive control down to 12,500, tops of the TCA's up to 12,500, providing an unbroken corridor for movement of high-performance aircraft in and out of the larger hubs, which is what our TCA's are for in positive controlled airspace.

Now, we have here a list of actions that I intend to take in the very near future. First, I intend to give even greater recognition to the benefits provided our air transportation system by reliever airports and other general aviation airports that siphon general aviation traffic away from air carrier airports. I have determined that by expanding

our efforts to establish approach and landing aids at key reliever and general aviation airports we may be able to reduce the mix of general aviation and air carriers at congested airports.

The greater availability of such aids will provide alternative training capabilities for general aviation pilots, which will not only serve to reduce such training at major air carrier airports, but will provide greater opportunities for pilot training so they will be able to better function in the national airspace system.

Also, these approach and landing aids will increase the utility of these airports by giving them an all-weather landing capability not previously possible. I intend to do this through an expansion of our establishment criteria for approach and landing aids, an expansion that will give full recognition to the benefit relievers, and other general aviation airports provide the system by redirecting general aviation aircraft away from busy air carrier airports.

Second, we will continue our high priority program for the installation of BRITE TV radar systems in our towers. This system provides great assistance to tower controllers in sequencing traffic.

Beyond that, I have instructed my staff to expedite the installation of BRITE alpha-numeric systems so that tower controllers using these digitized displays will have available the same data presently used by radar controllers. This feature will also provide the tower controller with conflict alert system and minimum safe altitude warning system capabilities.

Last, I have decided that our system has evolved to the point at which the concept of positive separation assurance should be expanded in terminal areas. Early next year we will issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking proposing a number of alternative actions to expand positive separation in terminal areas. Among the alternatives we will set out for public comment are;

Adding more terminal control areas;

Expanding the geographic coverage of existing terminal control

areas;

Implementing the concept of group III terminal control areas. Extending the concept of positive control, as exists at high altitudes, to terminal airspace;

Permitting only instrument flight rules operations within terminal airspace designated as positive control airspace;

Establishing Controlled Visual Flight Rules in terminal airspace designated as positive control airspace;

Applying mode C transponder requirements to any additional positive control airspace;

And, finally, broadening the requirements for the carriage of beacon transponders and altitude encoders to be compatible with separation assurance programs.

We will hold public hearings on this entire package, Mr. Chairman, in the near future.

And that concludes, Mr. Chairman, my summary of my statement. Thank you for your patience.