Aviation Policy News: Open letter on air traffic control to DOGE’s Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Mattie Neretin - CNP / MEGA / Newscom/RSSIL/Newscom

Aviation Policy Newsletter

Aviation Policy News: Open letter on air traffic control to DOGE’s Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Plus: Boeing's little-noticed moon mission failure, senators attack airline "junk fees," and more.

Robert Poole
Director of Transportation Policy

In this issue:

Open Letter on Air Traffic Control to DOGE’s Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

As you recently noted in your op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, you have been given “a historical opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government.” A critically important reduction would be to take the air traffic control system out of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and convert it into a user-financed utility.

Air traffic control (ATC) is a very small part of the federal budget, but it is an essential component of a safe and cost-effective aviation industry. Of all the air traffic control systems in developed countries, ours is one of the very few still funded by taxes and micromanaged by a political body. Over the past 30 years, nearly all major countries have separated air traffic control from their transportation ministries and converted it into a user-funded utility.

The U.S. Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is embedded within the FAA, a bureaucratic safety regulatory agency. FAA regulates all aspects of aviation at arm’s-length—except for the ATO. Self-regulation is a conflict of interest and violates recommended practices of the International Civil Aviation Administration (ICAO), which calls for arm’s-length separation between the safety regulator and all other aviation entities.

Our ATC system is the world’s largest and was once known as the world’s most advanced. That is no longer the case. Countless studies have shown that other countries’ ATC systems are better-managed, better-funded, and better-supplied with advanced technology than our ATO. The United States is far behind in implementing remote/digital control towers, which are safer, more effective, and less costly than the 20th-century brick-and-mortar towers that FAA is still building. Air traffic controllers in U.S. control towers still use paper flight strips to follow departing flights instead of having electronic hand-offs.

Long-time observers of U.S. air traffic control shortcomings refer to our ATO as “a would-be high-tech service business trapped in a cautious bureaucracy.” It cannot afford to hire and keep top-quality engineers, software developers, and program managers, so it has become captive of large aerospace companies that define each new system’s requirements and produce new systems with extraneous bells and whistles, at enormous cost. And because FAA and its ATO rely on annual funding from Congress, new systems get produced in small batches over a decade or more, with the last recipients not getting equipped before the system’s technology may already be obsolete.

According to the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (which represents the world’s air traffic providers), air traffic control organizations that operate as user-financed utilities total 62 worldwide. Since several providers serve multiple countries, today, 83 countries get their air traffic control from user-financed utilities. A good example is Nav Canada, incorporated as a nonprofit ATC corporation by Canadian legislation in 1996. Though only one-ninth the size of our ATO, Nav Canada’s unit costs are one-third lower than ours, and its technology is far more advanced.

Air traffic control utilities like Nav Canada issue revenue bonds to finance large-scale modernization, such as replacing FAA’s 20 aging high-altitude control centers with perhaps five consolidated centers. They can also acquire new systems all at once, rather than procuring them in dribs and drabs over many years.

Converting America’s air traffic control system into a user-funded system is a bipartisan issue. Legislation to that effect was developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) during the Clinton administration as part of its reinventing government agenda. A detailed proposal to take the ATO out of DOT and convert it into a user-funded nonprofit corporation was supported by the Trump administration and was twice approved by the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee (in 2017 and 2018). Former T&I Committee Chair Bill Shuster recently wrote that it’s time to try again. That recent effort won the support of the airline industry, the air traffic controllers’ union, and the Business Roundtable. It was endorsed by the editorial pages of many of America’s largest newspapers.

Here are some information resources on this important topic:

Thank you for considering this idea.

Robert Poole
Director of Transportation Policy, Reason Foundation

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Boeing’s Little-Noticed Moon Mission Failure

The ongoing failure of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to complete even one successful round-trip of astronauts to the International Space Station pales in comparison to a much larger, ongoing Boeing failure that has received almost no publicity. That program is the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) huge Artemis program to transport astronauts to and from the Moon. The gory details are set forth in a report by the NASA Inspector General, “NASA’s Management of the Space Launch System Block 1B Development” (IG-24-015). Despite having been released on Aug. 8, 2024, I’ve seen no news reports in the aerospace media on this appalling fiasco.

The Space Launch System (SLS) is the launch vehicle system NASA is developing for the Artemis program, but the overall program has had so many setbacks and cost overruns that the EUS failure may seem like something of a side show. But it is so late and so far over budget that it should call into question NASA’s ability to manage this endeavor  that has already cost an estimated $86 billion as of 2025, and could easily exceed $100 billion by Artemis’s 4th mission.

EUS is the more powerful upper stage for the SLS rocket, planned for the later moon landing missions. It’s intended to increase the SLS payload by 40%, from 27 metric tons to 38 metric tons. NASA’s recently revised schedule calls for using the lower-capacity upper stage for the first three Artemis missions, and going to the EUS for so-called Block 1B missions thereafter.

Boeing’s cost-plus contract for EUS started out at $962 million in 2014, but it had grown to a projected $2 billion by 2025. The Inspector General (IG) report projects that the final cost will end up at $5.7 billion by 2028.

But it gets worse, much worse. For the first 10 years of the Boeing contract, NASA delayed establishing the usual cost and schedule baseline, so there were no specific provisions by which it could hold accountable the Boeing Michaud facility in Louisiana. The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) reviews space vehicle progress and compliance with quality assurance requirements. DCMA has found numerous quality deficiencies and has issued a great many Corrective Action Requests to Boeing. A whole section of the IG report is headlined, “Boeing’s Ineffective Quality Management System and Inexperienced Workforce Increase Potential Risks.” Not only does it not meet industry standards, but it was so bad that DCMA found “contamination of metal shavings, Teflon, and other debris” on portions of the liquid hydrogen fuel tank.

In another case, “Boeing officials incorrectly approved hardware processing under unacceptable environmental conditions, accepted and presented damaged seals to NASA for inspection, and used outdated versions of work orders.” Another section of this chapter is titled, “Boeing’s Michoud Workforce Lacks Sufficient Production Experience, Training, and Instruction.” Its closing paragraph notes that “The lack of a trained and qualified workforce [at Michaud] increases the risk that the contractor will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards.”

There’s a great deal more, but I’m running out of space. Of the four recommendations the IG made to NASA, besides the obvious “fix all these major problems at Michaud,” #2 was “Institute financial penalties for Boeing’s non-compliance with quality control standards.” That was the only one that NASA rejected.

I draw two conclusions beyond what the IG report discusses. First, as NASA should have learned its fixed-price, performance-based contracts with “new space” companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX, there should be no more cost-plus contracts. Second, the whole SLS program was conceived mistakenly as an attempt to repeat the Apollo program, using mostly obsolete (so-called “proven”) technology, such as left-over engines from the Space Shuttle. It’s time to seriously consider a more cost-effective way to go back to the moon.

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Senators Attack Airline “Junk Fees”

At a Dec. 4 hearing, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused five airlines of charging unfair and unwarranted “junk fees” for things such as luggage and seat assignments. Senior officials from American, Delta, United, Frontier and Spirit defended such fees as having legitimate business purposes.

Over the six-year period from 2018 through 2023, the five airlines generated a total of $12.4 billion in seat fees and $25.3 billion in baggage fees. The fraction of airline revenue from those two kinds of fees ranged from far less than 1% at Delta to more than 6% at Frontier and Spirit, both ultra low-cost carriers (ULCCs). Also, the Senators implied that the decision to charge a passenger one of those fees may be based on personal information that airline websites require a passenger to provide prior to disclosing a seat fee or a baggage fee. That order of inputting information proves nothing, but it made for a provocative talking point.

One of the underlying concerns stated in the Subcommittee’s report (“The Sky’s the Limit: New Revelations About Airline Fees”) is that airlines increasingly resort to fees because the airline ticket tax is levied only on the actual ticket price (not including any ancillary fees). That is likely to be an unvoiced concern of the FAA, since it depends on ticket tax revenue for the lion’s share of its annual budget.

And that serves to illustrate how out-of-step the United States is in charging airlines for the provision of air traffic control. Nearly all other countries charge airlines directly for air traffic control services, following ICAO’s recommended formula based on each aircraft’s miles flown and its gross weight. The last major country to abolish passenger ticket taxes in favor of ATC weight-distance user fees was Canada, which made the switch in 2020, after the ATC function was transferred from Transport Canada to newly created Nav Canada, a federally chartered non-profit corporation.

Congress wisely deregulated U.S. commercial aviation in 1978, allowing competition to replace federal economic regulation of the airlines. The resulting competition led to large-scale reductions in airline ticket prices, making air travel affordable to nearly the entire U.S. population. The Subcommittee’s own report notes significant fee differences among the five carriers taking part in the hearing, which means air travelers have choices among airlines in terms of baggage and seat fees. Competition is working, even with ancillary fees. I’m not an attorney, but I think airlines would have reasons to litigate against ancillary fee regulation as a violation of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.

That said, I have a suggestion on airline bag fees. The growth in checked-bag fees has led to excessive use of carry-on bags, which on numerous flights leads to departure delays due to bags brought on board for which there is no longer bin space. Airlines could reduce or eliminate this problem by charging for carry-on bags and reducing or eliminating fees for checked bags.

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Powered-Lift SFAR Finalized
By Marc Scribner

At a National Business Aviation Association conference in October, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker announced the final Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) for powered-lift pilot certification and operating requirements. The SFAR had been eagerly anticipated by the advanced air mobility (AAM) industry, which had raised major concerns about FAA’s initial proposal. In crafting the final SFAR, FAA clearly took into account many of the concerns raised by the AAM industry. However, a number of details still need to be hashed out by regulators and developers of electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

The final SFAR for Integration of Powered-Lift: Pilot Certification and Operations was published in the Federal Register on Nov. 21, making it official. It will take effect on Jan. 21, 2025, and will remain in effect for 10 years. During that period, FAA plans to gather data from early eVTOL operations to inform permanent amendments to federal aviation regulations.

The reaction from the aviation industry has been largely positive. Billy Nolen, former FAA administrator and now chief regulatory officer at eVTOL developer Archer Aviation, said in a press statement following the October announcement, “Today is a big moment for the FAA, our industry and Archer as it signals the U.S.’s strong commitment to maintaining our global leadership in aerospace innovation.”

The reason for this optimism is that the final SFAR is significantly different from the SFAR that was proposed in June 2023, which was the culmination of the FAA’s decision in 2022 to require AAM airworthiness certifications to take place under its “powered-lift” category rather than Part 23 rules for conventional aircraft. As I noted in the Aug. 2023 issue of this newsletter, after the comment period closed on the SFAR notice of proposed rulemaking, the AAM industry raised serious concerns about the feasibility of FAA’s approach.

The most significant industry objections centered on FAA’s proposals on dual controls for pilot training and mandated energy reserves. Below, I discuss the evolution of FAA’s approach to both of these subjects over the course of the rulemaking proceeding.

Pilot training and dual controls: FAA initially proposed requiring pilots to be trained in dual-control aircraft, much like the requirement for airplanes and helicopters today. But eVTOL developers like Archer and Joby Aviation are pursuing aircraft designs with one pilot station and set of controls. The industry objected to the large financial burden the dual-control training requirement would place on startup manufacturers, who would effectively be required to manufacture special training aircraft. In the final SFAR, the dual-control requirement remains, but FAA provides three alternative compliance options for pilots to earn their type ratings in aircraft without dual controls. The most likely compliance pathway involves a combination of simulator training and enhanced pilot supervision prior to their ability to carry passengers and cargo.

Energy Reserves: FAA initially proposed requiring powered-lift aircraft to maintain at least 30 minutes of “fuel reserves” when operated under visual flight rules (VFR) and 45 minutes when operated under instrument flight rules (IFR), the same as conventional airplanes today. Industry vigorously opposed these requirements, noting that battery-powered eVTOLs will often be operating less than 30-minute flights. Developers also noted that requiring 30- or 45-minute energy reserves would greatly increase the battery weight and potentially make their eVTOLs unviable. The final SFAR adopted the helicopter energy reserve requirements of 20 minutes under VFR and 30 minutes under IFR, provided that an eVTOL is “continuously capable of conducting a landing in the vertical-lift flight mode along the entire route.”

While the AAM industry cheered these and other changes adopted in the final SFAR, it is important to keep in mind that this is an interim step as FAA now proceeds to modernize its regulatory framework to fully incorporate powered-lift aircraft. There are also some ambiguities in the final SFAR that must be resolved, including with respect to the energy reserve requirements.

In an interview with Aviation Week’s Graham Warwick (“FAA’s Final eVTOL SFAR Provides A Path To Commercial Service,” Nov. 8), David Dunning, director of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said, “Now we really need to understand what the FAA means when it says that, to leverage the helicopter VFR [visual flight rules] fuel reserve minimums, the powered-lift needs to be able to execute a vertical landing anywhere along the flight route.”

Too often, regulatory agencies merely go through the motions of notice-and-comment rulemaking—having already made up their minds from the start—but FAA appeared to listen to constructive criticism of its initial approach. Despite the lingering uncertainty, FAA’s careful consideration of responses to the proposed SFAR and ultimate adoption of a workable powered-lift regulatory framework deserves praise.

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Landing Fees for General Aviation Airports?

It has long been the policy of general aviation (GA) groups such as AOPA (Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association) and the Experimental Aircraft Association that landing fees for GA aircraft should not be charged at airports that primarily or exclusively serve those aircraft. Hence, recent interest by some GA airports in charging such fees is arousing controversy.

William Garvey discusses this development in his “Inside Business Aviation” column in Aviation Week’s Nov. 25-Dec. 8 issue. Garvey explains two developments that have opened the door for such landing fees. One is the phenomenon at some GA airports of student pilots flying numerous touch and go landings as part of their training. Using DeLand Municipal Airport in Florida as a case in point, he quotes airport manager John Eiff on his growing problem. Eiff reports that 70% of traffic movements at DeLand are training flights by aircraft mostly not based there. Most buy no fuel and don’t buy lunch; they simply use the runway and depart—or return again and again. DeLand gets an annual grant from FAA’s Airport Improvement Program, but that amount has not increased over 30 years. Yet costs of everything have increased.

What makes GA landing fees feasible is the fact that GA aircraft are equipped with ADS-B, which documents all flight movements. A company called Virtower provides ADS-B data to 410 public airports. Most use the information to document the need for additional facilities, but some (including Texarkana Regional Airport) are using it to identify aircraft and charge them for landing there. As of now, Garvey reports, Texarkana’s $2 per thousand pounds fee applies only to aircraft weighing 12,500 lbs. or more.

DeLand’s Eiff is considering a landing fee of $3 per 1,000 lbs. for all landing aircraft but waiving it for every arrival’s first flight of the day. That would spare planes based at the airport (i.e., paying customers via rental fees) while dealing with the large touch & go users who pay nothing but use valuable runway capacity.

AOPA still opposes any landing fees for small GA aircraft, but if examples like Texarkana and DeLand catch on, it may have to come to terms with airports using ADS-B to identify those who should be paying at least something to use GA airports.

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FAA Approves Long-Term Airport P3 Lease

The Avon Park Executive Airport in Avon Park, Florida has been approved for a long-term public-private partnership (P3) lease by the FAA. This is the first such privatization approved under the revamped program renamed the Airport Investment Partnership Program in 2018. The City of Avon Park proposal was submitted to FAA in July 2023, and its approval in late Nov. 2024 means FAA reviewed and approved the project in just 16 months. By contrast, the lease of Airglades Airport in Hendry County, Florida was submitted more than a decade ago under the prior version of the legislation, the Airport Privatization Pilot Program—and has still not received final approval.

The successful Avon Park bidder is Florida Airport Management (FAM), which provides services such as operating flight schools and renting airport hangar space. The initial lease term is 30 years, with extension options that could extend it to as long as 49 years, reports Infralogic (Dec. 5). The possible extensions will depend on FAM meeting key metrics, including growth in airport revenues and implementation of projects in the airport’s master plan. FAM will make annual lease payment of $85,000/year, to be inflation-adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index. The lease includes all the aviation land on the airport (thereby excluding a sports complex, water utility, and a warehouse). An attorney with Kaplan Kirsch, which was outside counsel on the lease, told InfraLogic that FAM plans to develop revenue-producing facilities on the airport, such as hangars but also potentially non-aviation facilities.

Avon Park City Manager Danielle M. Kelley told Infralogic that she “is a big fan of public-private partnerships,” due to their ability to leverage private dollars for the benefit of the public, as well as to create jobs.

The relatively speedy approval of the Avon Park P3 lease may indicate a change in priorities within FAA. Previous airport leases (such as San Juan, Puerto Rico) took many years for review, and as noted above, the Airglades project still has not been approved.

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News Notes

Scheduling Relief at Newark Airport
Due to planned 2025 runway closures at Newark International, FAA on Dec. 3 announced arrival and departure limits, allowing airlines using the airport to reduce their schedules without losing their slots at the airport. Weekend runway closures are planned for March 1 through April 14 and Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025. Daily closures will be in effect April 15 to June 15. These exemptions are in addition to the slot waivers in effect at the three major New York airports until Oct. 2025.

Sydney Audit Reveals Slot Problems
An audit carried out by To70 Aviation for Australia’s national government identified several anti-competitive impacts of the slot system used at the country’s largest airport, Sydney (SYD). The audit found that airlines “leveraged regulatory gaps to retain valuable peak-time slots,” as reported by Aviation Daily (Nov. 28). It also found that “carriers often spread non-utilization across multiple slot series to meet the 80/20 use-it-or-lose-it rule.” The audit also found that the current slot regime “limits opportunities for new entrants and reduces overall efficiency during peak periods.” But thus far Transport Minister Catherine King seems intent only on tweaking the current slot system, rather than considering its replacement by variable runway pricing.

India to Open Second New Delhi Airport
Aviation Daily (Nov. 15) reported that the long-planned second airport to serve New Delhi—Noida International Airport (DXN)—began a second phase of trial operations in November, which will continue until formal opening on April 17. The airport has been developed as a public-private partnership by a subsidiary of Zurich Airport International, which will also operate DXN. The airport will open with a single runway and initial capacity of 12 million annual passengers. The master plan envisions an ultimate capacity of 70 million annual passengers. DXN is about 50 miles south of downtown New Delhi.

FAA Certifies Two More Controller Training Universities
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s curriculum now meets FAA requirements for its graduates to bypass FAA Academy training (assuming they can pass the aptitude test) and go straight to an ATC facility for on-the-job training. And the University of North Dakota has qualified as the fourth such institution. The first two schools to be approved were Tulsa Community College and the University of Oklahoma.

Six European ANSPs to Use the Same ATC System
The air navigation service providers of Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, and Sweden formed an association some years ago to coordinate their air traffic management operations. It’s called COOPANS. Last month, they announced that over the next five years, they will all implement the latest TopSky system from Thales. TopSky handles en-route, approach, and oceanic control for both civil and military airspace. Hardware deployment, software integration, validation, and training will take place in parallel. COOPANS members handle 14% of Europe’s air traffic, so this is a small but meaningful step towards the promised Single European Sky.

FAA Approves Five-Fold Increase in Starship Launches
Politico (Nov. 11) reported that FAA has signed off on a draft Environmental Assessment (EA) that will permit 25 annual Starship launches from its Boca Chica, Texas launch site, compared with the previously approved five. FAA determined that the mitigations SpaceX agreed to will address its concerns. The EA will now go through a public comment period that will close on Jan. 17. SpaceX will also have to comply with existing safety, risk, and financial responsibility requirements.

Roke Has Developed Miniature eLORAN Antenna
A modern version of the Navy-developed LORAN positioning system called eLORAN is in use as a GPS backup in a number of countries including China and the UK. Its signals are much stronger than those of GPS, and it operates in an entirely different part of the frequency spectrum. UK-based Roke has introduced a miniature eLORAN antenna that is a 2.1” square and just 0.5” deep. Its positioning accuracy is listed as 8 meters (26 feet)—not as good as GPS but a lot better than nothing when/where GPS signals are not available.

NASA Will Add Uncrewed Moon Missions for Space Companies
Aviation Week (Nov. 25-Dec. 8) reported that NASA has announced added uncrewed moon missions for both SpaceX and Blue Origin’s Human Landing System service contracts. Among the added missions will be delivering both a pressurized lunar rover and a lunar habitat to the Moon’s surface.

Vinci Will Expand Lisbon Airport
Vinci Airports signed a €233 million contract to expand and modernize the existing Lisbon, Portugal airport. The project includes adding a new pier to Terminal 1 with 10 boarding bridges and 12 aircraft parking stands, along with other improvements. The national government announced plans to build a new Lisbon airport, which will eventually replace the current one. Both airports will continue to be operated by Vinci Airport’s Portuguese division, ANA.

Danish Government Will Buy Controlling Stake in Copenhagen Airport
Copenhagen Airport (CPH) was one of the first non-UK airports to be privatized in Europe. The original private operator later sold its stake to Danish pension fund ATP. Aviation Daily (Dec. 3) reports that the Danish government has reached a conditional agreement with ATP to buy its stake, valued at $4.5 billion. That would give the government 98% ownership of the airport. However, once that deal is completed, the government plans to only retain 50.1% of the airport, meaning the remaining stake will be available for purchase.

Skyports and ADP Will Operate Downtown Manhattan Heliport (DMH)
The New York City Economic Development Corporation has selected the bid of vertiport company Skyports and Groupe ADP (owner of the Paris airports) to operate the heliport for five years, starting in Jan. 2025. The contract will be renewable at five-year intervals, up to 20 years total. Under its new operator, DMH will be modified to handle air-taxis such as eVTOLs from companies such as Archer and Joby, both of which have expressed interest in serving Manhattan.

Commercial Crew Is a Major Loss for Boeing
Ars Technica reported (Oct. 24) what has become readily observable about Boeing’s contract to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Unlike SpaceX, which has carried out nine successful missions, Boeing has completed none. Both companies agreed to provide crew transport on fixed-price contracts. That was no problem for SpaceX, but it was virtually unheard of for Boeing. In October, Boeing’s new CEO announced that so far the company has accumulated a $6.2 billion net loss on its Commercial Crew contract. Besides its nine NASA missions, SpaceX has conducted several private orbital passenger flights.

DFW Begins Construction of Terminal F
The largest airport in Texas began construction of its sixth terminal last month, to be designated Terminal F. The overall project includes the 400,000 sq. ft. new terminal (for 15 new gates) plus the addition of 100,000 sq. ft. to Terminal E, which will house the facilities for check-in, security, and baggage claim for Terminal F. Passengers will reach the new terminal via the existing Skylink people-mover. This project has an estimated cost of $1.6 billion. In addition, DFW is under way on a $3 billion project to rebuild Terminal C, currently DFW’s biggest in terms of passengers handled. That project also includes adding nine gates to Terminal A.

Ryanair Plans Cuts in French Service to Protest Tax Increase
Under consideration in the French Parliament is an increase in air passenger taxes, aiming to raise an additional €1 billion per year. If the tax is approved, Ryanair says it will reduce its air service in France by 50% starting in January. Ryanair operates 10 domestic routes within France and 168 international routes to and from France. It is the third-largest airline in France, handling nearly 10% of the market.

Space Florida Plans Expanded Cape Infrastructure
A set of planned projects in the Cape Canaveral spaceport is intended to increase the launch payload capacity from 1,000 metric tons to 5,000 metric tons—which would be the equivalent of 220 Falcon 9 launches per year. The new infrastructure projects deal with expanded wastewater treatment, electrical infrastructure, wharf expansion, wetland mitigation, and replacement of a too-small bridge.

Chile Renews Concessions for Two Airports
Chile’s national government has announced renewed public-private partnership concession agreements for two regional airports, Atacama and Antofagasta. The company is a consortium of Madrid-based Sacyr Concesiones (70%) and local partner Cointer (30%). Planned upgrades will begin in 2027 with completion by 2030.

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Quotable Quote

“A newer and stronger civil GPS signal, called L5, isn’t yet operational although it was designed more than 20 years ago. L5 operates on a different frequency and offers full redundancy. Its signal is more robust by a factor of 30. The enabling satellites, however, have been awaiting launch for over two years. Integrity monitoring of L5 has also been delayed for years. Increased urgency is vital. Other interference solutions, using so-called signals of opportunity, are apt to take much longer, in part because they lack a long history of use. Supporting recommendations from the Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board are on GPS.gov.”
—Brad Parkinson, Stanford University, “Poor Regulations Are Jamming GPS Security,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2024

“Last month’s article about proposed airline seats to which individuals’ own wheelchair could be fastened is a wonderful idea, but the wheelchairs attached to seat structure would have to meet FAA Part 21 requirements such as flammability and dynamic seat certification (involving sled tests and crash dummies). It’s an extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming process. It would likely only be possible if a single wheelchair design were tested [and passed], but that eliminates the possibility of passengers using their own wheelchairs.”
—Matt Thurber, Editor-in-Chief, AIN Media Group, email to Robert Poole, Nov. 21, 2024 (used with permission)

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