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's primary flaw is its sole reliance on GPS for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) without a robust, independent global-scale backup system.
The article criticizes the dismantling of eLORAN, presenting it as an ideal, cost-effective, and independent PNT backup that could prevent NextGen from being a "giant single point of failure."
This over-dependence on GPS makes NextGen vulnerable to major outages, which could cripple the system and disproportionately affect 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.