Business Aviation Forum Notes from October Meeting at FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City

by: Scott Dyer

The Metro NY area Business Aviation Forum met on October 25, 2011 at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center.

Attending were representatives of various business aviation flight departments, flight plan providers, local airport user groups (such as the WAA) and FAA . A special guest was Mr. Edward Bolen, NBAA President.

Mr. Bolen’s remarks opened the meeting, with comments about the current state of business aviation as it is under criticism from political leaders, FAA funding prospects, user fees and the renewed possibility of privatization of ATC services.

At the last previous Business Aviation Forum meeting (April 28, 2011), the WAA and others renewed a request for an improved ILS system for Runway 16 at Westchester County Airport to permit certain equipped operators with special authorization to attain near-CATII minima (called Special Authorization CAT I). The FAA agreed to take the request under advisement at that time. On follow up, the FAA reported that its study had agreed that there exists a strong business case for this request, with further meetings to occur in November 2011 with Warren Strickland, of the FAA’s New York Area Program Integration Office.

Many thanks to our former Air Traffic Manager, Laura Stensland, for her steady support of this proposal within the agency.

Mr. Strickland reported on many new procedures that are in the offing for the NY Metro area. Among those of interest to business aviation groups, he referred to:

• A new RNAV SID for Newark’s 4 departures will be published to take effect in or about April 2012. This new SID will deconflict with Runway 6 arrivals at Teterboro.
• A New LPV 5 approach into Morristown is presently scheduled to be published and effective in Feburary 2012. This will permit lower minima than are presently available to that runway.
• Work is progressing on a LPV 6 approach into Teterboro, which is now being coordinated with the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers in accordance with the terms of the ATC collective bargaining agreement. FAA expects that this procedure may be available in the Spring of 2012.
• NBAA is working on obtaining the appropriate authorizations from within the FAA for an RNAV charted visual procedure for Teterboro runway 19 that would avoid overflights of the hospital . which would essentially be a charted visual approach with some RNAV waypoints. There is some resistance to allowing non-air carrier and non-Part 135 aircraft fly such procedures (as contrasted with charted visual procedures) and NBAA and others (including some FAA officials working on our behalf) are seeking to obtain the necessary approvals.

Mr. Strickland further reported improvements in system caused delays (equipment, weather, etc.) at Westchester Airport in the first 9 months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. Specifically, in the period January 1 – September 30 2010, there were 140,807 operations at HPN with an average delay of 45.88 minutes (the first minute of delay being measured from proposed departure time plus 15 minutes). In 2011, there were 146,124 operations (a 3.8% increase), with the average delay falling to 39.85 minutes.

Ralph Tamburro, Traffic Management Officer at NY Tracon, reported on the area’s experience over the summer months in Severe Weather Avoidance Plan operations (“SWAP”). This was the worst year yet with SWAP being in effect on 98 days. The Tactical Route Coordinator (“TRC”) position at the Tracon has been in use since November 2009 and was staffed each day when SWAP was in effect this summer. The TRC program has shown some effectiveness, with concentration this year on Teterboro, Morristown and Westchester departures. (Newt year the TRC will be working on departures from all NY area satellite airports.) For example, on one day with SWAP in effect, TRC was responsible for moving 12 aircraft out of TEB on low level routings thus alleviating delays at that airport. Similar reroutes and delay reduction has been accomplished at HPN and MMU to date.

Mr. Tamburro reported that a TRC dedicated web page will be available to the user public soon, which will show the current status of delays and available reroutes. The web address will be provided to our members when it is received. He also reported that a capable new FAA product, the Route Availability Prediction Tool (“RAPT”), will be made available to users in the future. RAPT ‘s significant benefit is that it looks out 75 minutes (perhaps to be increased to 120 minutes) and forecasts the availability of departure routes in light of developing weather and expected traffic volumes.

Holiday routings (especially for the Thanksgiving holiday) are being decided upon by FAA Air Traffic in early November 2011.

The FAA’s NY Area Program Integration Office maintains a delay reduction docket that is open to the public to propose changes in routings and procedures that are intended to reduce air traffic delay. The page can be accessed at the FAA website.

Proposals thus submitted will be tracked and considered, and this will provide a formal mechanism that will ensure that submitted ideas are not “lost in the cracks” when mentioned by users informally to FAA staff.

Mr. Fred Towers of Universal Flight Planning spoke on the role of a flight planning firm in business aviation, and what goes into the planning process (including on-the-ground support in outlying areas of the world). This was part of the “Day in the Life” series at the Business Aviation Forum, allowing participants to gain greater insights into specific facets of business aviation activities.

The formal presentations concluded with a presentation by Kim Lamonde of Jeppesen on the iPad Flight Deck application.

Following the formal presentations, a lunch was provided to the participants and the afternoon consisted of highly informative tours of various aspects of the Technical Center’s work on the NextGen ATC program, work in support of control tower modernization and siting, and other research activities.

The next Business Aviation Forum will be held in January or February 2012, probably at the Eastern Region headquarters at JFK, with specific date and site to be announced.

Handouts and slides from this meeting are available at: http://www.mitrecaasd.org/TFMForums/. Use the login name of “forums” and the password of “customers”. (Click on “northeast” on the left side of the initial page, and then “ZNY” on the next page that presents, for a list of various meeting slides including this October 25, 2011 Business Aviation Forum meeting.)