
Paper-Pushing Flight Controllers See Future in Canada's System - rhayabusa
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-12/paper-pushing-flight-controllers-see-future-in-canada-s-system
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redthrowaway
>The two technology chiefs attribute NAV CANADA’s ability to adopt new
technology to several factors. They have involved controllers throughout the
process, which helps with design and testing. If an off-the-shelf product
exists that meets their needs, they don’t bother building it in-house. And
they work on manageable, small improvements rather than the moon-shot projects
that are typical for air-traffic providers.

>“We don’t take too big a bite,” Koslow said. “We do it incrementally.”

So, by following standard software development best practices, they avoid the
massive failures that characterize large government contracts. Who'd have
thunk it?

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johnm1019
> U.S. debate to privitize air-traffic control spotlights Canada

Heaven forbid, we would pay the Canadians for what they have that is already
proven to work well and efficiently...

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pubman
It works well for them. Keep in mind the US has thousands of more airports and
significantly more air traffic. Just like in the tech world something might
work for 100 users of an app but may not work at scale. I am not bashing the
NAV Canada system just saying the comparisons to the US ATC aren't apples to
apples for numerous reasons.

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maxxxxx
It seems the US can't learn anything from anywhere in the world because it's
too big, too many states, too small (in comparison to China) or for some other
reason.

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pubman
Your words not mine. I said nothing about learning and only about making
comparisons.

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maxxxxx
Sorry, I didn't want to attack you. I just notice that whenever something
works in another country (see healthcare or public infrastructure) a lot of
people in the US will say it can't work in the US: Either the US is too big or
it's a "socialist" thing and therefore needs to be avoided.

I think this attitude is a big danger for the US. There was a time when the US
could teach the world but that time is coming to an end. Other countries have
learned whatever advantages the US system has and now they are building on
that knowledge and they are sometimes coming up with better solutions. If the
US keeps ignoring these developments it will slowly fall behind until it's too
late.

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pubman
No worries. I agree completely that the US can learn plenty from other
countries regardless of size on tons of topics. I was just trying to point out
the typical over simplification/comparisons that news articles tend to make
about technical things especially aviation.

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zbjornson
Everything listed in the article is actually already used by the FAA. Paper
strips went away about 10 years ago in ATC centers and more recently in towers
[0]. FAA has ADS-B for satellite-based navigation over Alaska and is deploying
it elsewhere (notably oceanic regions) [1][2]. Digital communication ("text
messaging") is coming to towers [3] and variants of it have existed for years
in control centers for certain aircraft.

Check out [https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/) for
lots of info on their improvement efforts.

None of this is to say the FAA is perfect--it's not, but it's definitely
improving and they have an immensely difficult problem to manage. The FAA
handles a much larger traffic volume than Canada, including many of the most
congested regions in the world. (Planes are not evenly distributed!) The
Advanced Automation System was the wrong approach, trying to overhaul the
entire system at once, and NextGen is successfully taking the incremental
approach.

[0]
[https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/snapshots/stories/?slide=37](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/snapshots/stories/?slide=37)
[1]
[https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/)
[2]
[https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/snapshots/stories/?slide=26](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/snapshots/stories/?slide=26)
[3]
[https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/update/progress_and_plans/data_c...](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/update/progress_and_plans/data_comm/)

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Animats
Tokyo Haneda, one of the world's busiest airports, still uses paper strips, by
choice. They like the explicit handoff of passing a strip to another
controller. Here's a human factors study from France on that subject.[1]

[1]
[http://www.atmseminar.org/seminarcontent/seminar4/papers/p_0...](http://www.atmseminar.org/seminarcontent/seminar4/papers/p_087_hf.pdf)

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telesilla
Are you able to explain what this paper strip system is and what it's for?

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Animats
The link above has an explanation. For a simpler version, see this video,
which is at the beginning of a Japanese drama about enroute air traffic
control.[1] Note that the towers use paper strips, but enroute and area
control use screens with images of strips. This is all about who has
responsibility for the aircraft right now.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4WB_VlD88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4WB_VlD88)

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pj_mukh
Woah. A great system for drones to start self-reporting flight plans into .

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neves
Does anyone have first hand information about this system? It looks too good
to be true. Not even a problem with it.

