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:

The article expresses skepticism about NextGen's prospects, drawing parallels to the FAA's past, failed Advanced Automation System (AAS).
A critical flaw in NextGen is its sole reliance on GPS for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), which creates a "giant single point of failure" with no robust global-scale backup.
Despite its potential as an independent and cost-effective backup, the e-LORAN system is being dismantled, leaving aviation, particularly general aviation, vulnerable to crippling outages if GPS availability or quality degrades.

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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.