VLJs' Impact on ATC Is Uncertain

Aviation Week & Space Technology 09/24/2007, page 63
David Hughes Washington
As deliveries begin, the impact of very light jetson the ATC system is just beginning

With as many as 7,600 very light jets forecast to be flying in U.S. skies by 2025, a key operational question will be whether an air traffic system transitioning to satellite-based navigation will be able to absorb all of them.

The Government Accountability Office recently summarized nine VLJ outlooks, ranging from the Teal Group’s low of 3,000 aircraft by 2016 to Rolls-Royce’s high of 7,600 by 2025. The air taxi business will play a role, alongside owner-flown aircraft, in any additional load on the U.S. air traffic system.

Florida-based DayJet is about to show what it can do with an on-demand air taxi service using the Eclipse 500. The company expects to have 40 Eclipse 500s in service by year-end and 140 by late 2008, according to Bruce J. Holmes, director of air systems research. For 33 years, he worked as a research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, where he helped to design the NextGen ATC system with the FAA.

Holmes says DayJet will be opening up service primarily to “underutilized” airports, with initial operations using five DayPorts at Boca Raton, Lakeland, Gainesville, Tallahassee and Pensacola, Fla. Flights will operate selling seats “in network” to these airports and “out of network” to other facilities in Florida when a customer charters an entire airplane. DayPort locations will then be added at similar airports in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Meanwhile, DayJet is starting operations just at the end of the biggest summer-delay meltdown in the history of U.S. civil aviation. The problems naturally have been at large and congested airports—in the New York metropolitan area, for example. But big airports aren’t where DayJet plans to fly. Holmes says the NextGen ATC plan devised by the Joint Planning and Development Office in Washington will not fix congestion at 14 of the 35 biggest U.S. airports. They will still be in a serious delay crunch when the program is completed, he notes.

Instead, DayJet will operate in a “parallel universe” of underused airspace and airports where air service has been scarce, if available at all. But the company also plans to be an “early adopter” of some of the innovative air traffic techniques that will be possible with the NextGen satellite navigation approach to ATC.

For example, DayJet intends to use Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches to fly GPS-guided procedures down to precision minimums (200-ft. decision altitude) as soon as possible. It’s even working with airports and state governments to determine if ADS-B ground-based receivers could be installed earlier than the FAA envisions at some locations. The agency is not targeting Florida to receive ADS-B equipment by 2010, meaning the state may have to wait until the next phase, scheduled for completion in 2013.

Holmes explains that DayJet may base as many as 25 aircraft at some airports, and they will often be arriving at about the same time late in the day. Thus, “ADS-B in” capability for cockpit display of other DayJet traffic would help pilots plan their arrivals efficiently.

The GAO report says the impact of VLJs on FAA costs and Aviation Trust Fund revenues will depend on how many aircraft are delivered, the extent to which they replace existing aircraft, and whether they facilitate a large-scale air taxi industry.

The same factors will influence VLJs’ impact on ATC. Aviation consultant Jack Olcott, former president of the National Business Aviation Assn., says he agrees with the GAO in that the introduction of VLJs will be orderly and the “sky won’t be blackened” by them. He adds that it’s too early to quantify the effect of owner-flown VLJs, a refinement of the entry-level business jet. The industry has 35 years of experience with this type of aircraft, he adds.

“Today’s FAA, training community and insurance industry are prepared to deal with VLJs in the hands of owner pilots, albeit cautiously. Time and accident/incident experience will shape future policy, but I suspect there will be few surprises,” says Olcott.

In a 2005 analysis, Philippe A. Bonnefoy, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that VLJs might operate much the way light bizjets do now. This means they won’t always take off from an out-of-the-way airport and head for another one in a similar location (AW&ST July 25, 2005, p. 51). For example, they may want to travel to the New York city area; but unlike large bizjets using Teterboro, N.J., airport, VLJs have short-runway capability that might allow them to use small airports such as Princeton, N.J.’s