Call Sign Chaff Continued from page 17 to provide priority handling with- out adding to frequency congestion. With a UAT, the L typically can- not be added to the call sign from the cockpit; thus, a CSMM is born. “When N123 [a medical transport helicopter] takes a patient on board and transitions to Lifeguard LN123 [priority call sign], the pilots can’t reconfigure the ADS-B,” Peri said. Other specialty flight operations find themselves in the same situa- tion, including flight schools, the Civil Air Patrol, humanitarian missions and animal rescue. “This was a big shakeup for us,” Peri said. “We spent most of 2017 making sure avionics providers are asking the operators the right questions before they select one unit or another.” The “right ques- tions” include the potential need for a dynamic flight identification along with the legacy questions of how high the aircraft will fly, whether it will fly internationally and what type of position source is needed. In some cases, operators or avionics install- ers read the FAA ADS-B rule differ- ently than the agency expected. This finding led the FAA to publish a legal interpretation in July 2017 to clarify the issue. Peri noted the FAA, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and others have updated their online deci- sion trees to highlight the potential need for changeable call signs. The FAA is accepting “proce- dural accommodation” to solve the CSMM problem for certain Part 135 operators, flight schools and others. For example, if an EMS operator dedicates an aircraft to air ambulance flights only, air traffic controllers will automatically associate the aircraft’s call sign (AirMed 123) with the 18 specialty mission (Lifeguard). Embry- Riddle Aeronautical University and the Civil Air Patrol are adopting the same strategy of tying a specialty call sign to a specific aircraft. However, if an aircraft sometimes does double duty as a non-medical charter air- craft, the procedural accommoda- tion likely will not help, cautioned James Kenney, an FAA aviation safety inspector. In that case, the opera- tor will have to equip with an ADS-B that has a pilot-changeable call sign. Kenney’s immediate focus is to drastically decrease the number of CSMMs ahead of the January 1, 2020, ADS-B mandate. “We contact these folks and get them educated,” he said about operators with CSMM problems. The outreach appears to be working: CSMM numbers peaked in December 2017 at approximately 31,000 for the 48 contiguous states and dropped in both January and February 2018, Kenney said. “What I and my small team are trying to do is communicate the correct process—buying and installing the right equipment—to as many people as possible,” he said. John Croft is a writer and edi- tor with the FAA’s NextGen Outreach and Reporting group. In this position, Mr. Croft writes features for external publi- cations, focused primarily on NextGen- related technologies and programs. Mr. Croft was formerly the Avionics and Safety senior editor for Aviation Week and Space Technology in Washington, D.C., and prior to that, was Americas Editor for Flight International in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Croft is an FAA certified commercial pilot and flight instructor and part-owner of a 1977 Piper Archer II. He lives with his wife, two boys and two Weimaraners, in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Flight schools like Embry-Riddle often use specialty call signs that must be programmed into the ADS-B unit Aviation Business Journal | 2nd Quarter 2018
