What To Do About FSS?

J. Mac McClellan

Saturday, November 01, 2003 at 10:00 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

The FAA is investigating Flight Service Stations (FSS) with the aim of potentially consolidating, reducing, or privatizing services due to the high cost of human briefings compared to automated systems like DUAT.
Advances in technology, including DUAT, internet weather sources (e.g., ADDS), and in-cockpit weather systems, provide pilots with more convenient, often graphical, and equally accurate weather information, leading many to bypass traditional FSS briefers.
While some pilots, especially new ones, still prefer human interpretation, FSS briefers primarily relay computer-generated data, a function that automated systems can perform more efficiently, challenging the economic justification for extensive human-based FSS operations.

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The FAA has conducted a study among pilots to determine how they use Flight Service Stations. The agency also hopes to determine what we like and don’t like about the FSS. Bottom line: the FAA is looking for reasons, or even cover, to radically change the FSS, or even eliminate it.

The FAA’s reason for examining the FSS operation is both sound and familiar. It’s cost. Every telephone briefing by an FSS specialist costs taxpayers many dollars, perhaps as much as $25, according to some estimates. The FAA spokesman couldn’t come up with a cost per briefing estimate. Every computer-delivered briefing over the direct user access terminal (DUAT) costs only about 50 cents. The difference is startling and certainly deserves examination in these times of tight budgets.