Airspace users and the air traffic management network interact every day and the operation is usually pretty smooth. Of course nobody is happy when there are delays caused by air traffic control capacity constraints, but this is also part of the game. Increasing demand and competition for the same scarce resources, like runways, makes it almost inevitable that not everyone can fly as they have planned.
As a general rule, aircraft coming out of the factories of Airbus, Boeing and the other airframers have all the equipment on board to operate in any airspace of the world. There are occasions though when the ATM network introduces new requirements aimed at reducing delays, enhancing safety or some similar, recognized and accepted purpose. They have two options: either go for voluntary equipage or issue a mandate.
In theory, voluntary equipage should work when there is a compelling business case for the new feature and airlines will go for it on this basis. In theory. In practice even the best business case tends to bring differing results to different companies and even in sight of clear benefits, some outfits will still have different priorities and they decide not to equip… it is voluntary, after all. The problem here is that most ATM enhancements work only if a fairly large percentage of the affected aircraft population is equipped. If this threshold is not reached, the benefits fail to materialize and those who had taken the voluntary path end up having wasted their money.
A mandate is a different matter altogether. Here a date is set for new aircraft to have the required equipment on board ex-factory and another date, usually a little later, is set for older aircraft to comply with the mandate. The mandate has the force of law and it is generally hated by the airspace users. They much prefer voluntary equipage… But we know it does not work, so back to the mandates.
Having a mandate is no assurance that things will actually be ready on time. When we were working on bringing in 8.33 kHz channel spacing in Europe, the deadline had to be postpones twice. The reason? Airlines usually wait until the last minute to equip and more often than not, the shops run out of slots or equipment, or both so it becomes practically impossible to complete the retrofit for everyone in time. Here again those who plan ahead and equip in time will inevitably lose out because they will be carrying the new boxes that are totally useless for possibly several years, until the laggards catch up.
But the mandate at least has the advantage of having everyone catch up… eventually.
Of course such overarching changes in the ATM system do not happen often and are reserved for truly fundamental improvements. Examples were 8.33 kHz, reduced vertical separation minima and now, air/ground digital link and Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC). The mandate is for Europe and calls for new aircraft to be equipped since January 2011. Older aircraft must be ready by February 2015. All this applies only to aircraft operating above Flight Level 285 but it is widely expected that others will also equip to be on the safe side lest they are left out of benefits that will come once the best equipped-best served principle gains wider traction.
To be compliant with this mandate, you need a third radio with VDL-2 capability and a communications management unit (CMU) that acts as a router and also houses the CPDLC applications. The costs vary widely and can go as high as 150K per shipset, not including labor and ground time.
Such retrofits can be tricky. In the case of 8.33 kHz channel spacing, we needed not only new radios that could operate with much narrower tolerances but also new control panels… and this was the catch. In order to work with the new radios, the control panels required an extra wire to go from the cockpit to the equipment bay. In many cases, placing this wire was almost the most expensive part of the retrofit.
CPDLC has its own quirks. New radio, text-enabled user interface, CMU and a warning display in the pilot’s direct field of view to announce when a new message has arrived represent a challenge which is not always equally easy to meet. At the same time, on certain aircraft type/equipment combinations, the retrofit for CPDLC is primarily a software upgrade which of course makes the operation much simpler.
So what is the situation in terms of equipage?
New aircraft are ok and there are several hundred which were equipped as part of EUROCONTROL’s pioneer scheme that provided seed money as part of the LINK2000+ program to help early birds over the equipage hurdle. This of course leaves several hundred aircraft still unaccounted for.
As usual, the airlines are waiting… 2015 is still two years away after all. No doubt, as we get closer to the mandate date, things will start to move and no doubt the demand will outstrip the capacity. Perhaps one bright spot in this scenery is that the required equipment is in sufficient supply due to the new-aircraft mandate. This is very different from what we faced during the 8.33 equipage where new radios were only manufactured in quantity when orders were actually placed.
Anyway, in a little while we will see whether the industry has learned its retrofit lesson…