You’d Be Surprised What _Isn’t_ Being GPS Tracked
A post a little off the beaten track here today. Fellow blogger Don Brown is a retired air traffic controller and has been writing quite a bit lately on the deep, devastating and deadly controller crisis that most of you don’t even know you are living through.
Controller crisis? Yep. The Air Traffic Control system in the US … once the standard of the world is broke and it is broke bad. Among many other legacies the “Shrub” in the White House will leave the country when he goes off to his undeserved retirement and three or four book Presidential Library will be the taste in our mouths that lingers long after the present FAA Administrator, Marion Clifton Blakey departs the scene.
You’ve seen the beginnings of the deadliness here. Air Traffic control towers, departure and approach controls and ATC Centers are short, very short of experienced personnel. The existing personnel are overworked, “dicked with” by the current administration … failing to honor contracts and Federal law put in place in good faith … and most importantly OLD, like me. The pipeline of new trainees is barely trickling and in case you hadn’t noticed, air traffic is increasing every day. I would recommend you read Don’s blog post on The Morning After and also this very well-written analysis of why most of our so-called “systems of air traffic collision avoidance are not suitable “systems” at all. Collision Evasion System .
The reason you’re reading these recommendations here. in the ‘Net’s primary resource for GPS Tracking ROI information is that I think it is important that you understand we presently track trash trucks hauling garbage, taxi cabs hauling prostitutes, sex offenders peering up little girl’s skirts and dogs looking for a bitch … but we don’t track airliners at all.
Well we do, sort of. Using an archaic, less than full coverage radar systems we give controllers visual tracking information … not precise location on an accurate map so they can really see where aircraft are, when they can see them. They also can’t track on the ground and give reliable information to prevent accidents like this one or this one … both simplistic mistakes with extremely deadly consequences. The cheapest garbage truck tracking system could have given pilots and controllers the information need to prevent both these accidents.
Many people look at systems like Flight Aware and think that’s a solution … but the info on Flight Aware is al “after the fact” and is useless to provide the high accuracy position data needed to separate aircraft reliably.
Most importantly … none of these systems tracks ALL aircraft and if you don’t track ALL aircraft you can’t assure the safety of ANY aircraft.
Happy? reading … and, as always, comments, emails to davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me at 1-719-423-8872