Smoke on the Horizon

By Tim Arel, Chief Operating Officer of the Air Traffic Organization

Over the last few days, millions of people across the Northeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic have been under air-quality alerts as wildfire smoke shrouded major cities. Wildfires are often devastating, and their effect on our airspace speaks to the intensity of the current situation in Canada.

One thing I truly admire about the FAA is our resiliency and ability to pivot quickly to address changing airspace needs. This week our air traffic team issued traffic management initiatives based on the location of the smoke and the direction of the wind. Their efforts continued to maintain the safety of the flying public and were briefed all the way up to the president.

Managing airspace is a global challenge, and I spent the last week in Europe meeting my peers from NATO and EUROCONTROL , as well as CANSO 's Global ATM Summit, to discuss common airspace challenges and how we collectively ensure the safety and efficiencies of our airspace. With the summer travel season officially here, we will all experience challenges: increased traffic volume, airport construction, and pop-up storms. I was honored to represent all of you in this opportunity to exchange best practices with my international colleagues.

Aviation safety, modernization, and sustainability were reoccurring themes in our discussions, and with that in mind, I want to recognize the outstanding collaboration at this week’s FAA Surface Safety Industry Day.

We know that a safe and efficient national airspace system begins and ends on the airport surface. Over the last few months, we have reduced the rate of surface incidents, but they continue to be a risk. That’s why we have developed a mitigation strategy, leveraging the innovation of industry.

In the next few weeks, we will publish a request for information, or RFI, asking industry to propose cost-effective air traffic situational awareness tools that can enhance our surface safety environment.

Then over the next 12 months, we will pilot the deployment of an affordable, commercial, off-the-shelf solution at airports to decrease surface safety risk. Our goal is to provide affordable technology that will enhance air traffic controllers’ situational awareness at towers that do not have access to surface surveillance tools such as ASDE-X or ASSC.?