| FAA Approves Satellite-Guided Aircraft Approaches for UPS |
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved United Parcel Service's (UPS) use of ADS-B technology for its flight operations at Louisville International Airport, marking the first such use of satellite-guided merging and spacing during airport approaches in the United States, UPS confirmed this week.
ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, utilizes GPS signals to determine aircraft position. Aircraft transponders receive satellite signals; transponders in turn transmit their precise location, along with other data from the aircraft’s flight monitoring system, such as the type of aircraft, its speed, its flight number, and whether it is turning, climbing, or descending. The code containing all of this data is automatically broadcast from the aircraft’s transponder once per second, according to the FAA.
Other aircraft equipped to receive the data and ADS-B ground stations up to 200 miles away receive these broadcasts. ADS-B ground stations add radar-based targets for non-ADS-B-equipped aircraft to the mix and send all of the information back up to equipped aircraft, along with information on weather and flight restrictions. This information is displayed on aircraft cockpit display screens as well as air traffic control displays.
The airport in Louisville, Kentucky, is home to UPS's WorldPort Hub, the principal center for its package air delivery service in the United States. UPS launched its own airline in 1988; today it has some 281 aircraft in its fleet and operates in 200 countries around the globe.
UPS will specifically use ADS-B to handle the merging and spacing of its planes on approach for landing at the Louisville airport. The company has been an early proponent and developer of ADS-B technology; it maintains that by using the technology for departing and arriving aircraft, it can better manage both fuel consumption and emissions.
While UPS's operations at Louisville mark the first implementation of ADS-B technology in the United States, use of the technology should soon be spreading. In 2005 the FAA settled on ADS-B as the preferred technology path for air traffic control; it has set aside $165 million for fiscal years 2007 and 2008 to begin implementing the technology in the United States and begin replacing the existing ground-based radar infrastructure.
The software in the ADS-B system used by UPS comes from Aviation Communication and Surveillance Systems (ACSS). In the future ACSS plans to add an alert feature that will tell flight crews that a runway is occupied or soon will be, UPS said.
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