Deja Vu All Over Again: The Advanced Automation System

Those of you who once held paper certificates may remember the ill-fated Advanced Automation System (AAS), one of the worlds most ambitious software projects. Launched in 1981 and terminated in 1994, it cost over $3.7 billion and didnt produce a single piece of software.

Fred Simonds

Tuesday, December 02, 2014 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

NextGen faces significant skepticism, echoing concerns from the costly and failed Advanced Automation System (AAS) project, despite some differences.
A glaring omission in NextGen's design is the lack of a robust, independent backup for its critical reliance on GPS for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT).
This over-dependence on GPS without a global-scale backup system makes NextGen a "giant single point of failure," potentially crippling general aviation during any major GPS outage.

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Those of you who once held paper certificates may remember the ill-fated Advanced Automation System (AAS), one of the world’s most ambitious software projects. Launched in 1981 and terminated in 1994, it cost over $3.7 billion and didn’t produce a single piece of software.

AAS was far ahead of its time. But there is enormous skepticism that the FAA can do any better now. Particularly disturbing is that some high-level FAA insiders have the same smoke-and-mirrors agitation about NextGen that they felt during AAS’ heyday.