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, despite some advancements over the failed Advanced Automation System (AAS), faces skepticism due to its almost exclusive reliance on GPS for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).
This sole dependence on GPS creates a "giant single point of failure" as there is a critical lack of a robust, independent global backup system.
The article laments the dismantling of the viable e-LORAN backup system and warns that a major GPS or WAAS outage could severely cripple NextGen operations, particularly for general aviation.

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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.