Don’t Just Upgrade to ADS-B Out: Confirm Your Compliance Continued from page 29 That means you have to have a transponder capable of DO-260B transmissions and an upgraded or new Wide-Area Augmentation System (WAAS) receiver unless you plan to fly below 10,000 feet and avoid Class A, B, and C airspace. Why Should Operators Plan Their Upgrade NOW? Because the ADS-B mandate applies to most air- craft that will fly in U.S. airspace, there are a lot of air- craft that need to be brought to compliance. Duncan Aviation’s data analytics team lead by Kent Kuta, Market Research Supervisor, developed methods for determin- ing the number of aircraft currently in compliance. When evaluated, in concert with industry hangar capacity and labor resources, the results paint a startling picture for operators who still need to comply with ADS-B. Kuta reported: “Using data from Duncan Aviation’s proprietary aircraft database, the FAA and other industry sources, we discovered that as of June 30th compliance, something that can be caused by a number of issues, including hardware that does not meet the perfor- mance standards, installation errors, or flight crew errors. Earlier Standard Issues , roughly 70% of the business jets registered in the United States have not yet complied with the mandate. That means that just under 10,000 business jets do not yet have ADS-B Out capability. What is more concerning is that at the current rate of ADS-B adoption, which is roughly 190 aircraft per month, about 4,000 business aircraft will still need ADS-B when the mandate goes into effect. Those aircraft, for all intents and purposes, will be grounded. For the entire fleet to be ADS-B compliant by the dead- line, 329 aircraft need to be updated every month from now until the mandate goes into effect.” The FAA has stated several times that the man- date deadline will not change. With limited labor and hangar capacity, operators need to plan ahead to ensure their business aircraft will be able to con- tinue to meet its mission and company needs. NPEs Compound the Issue In addition to the majority of operators waiting to upgrade their aircraft to ADS-B, the FAA reports that there are a large number of Nonperforming Emitter (NPE) issues. These are ADS-B systems that are not transmitting in Aviation Business Journal | 3rd Quarter 2017 Duncan Aviation experts have spoken with several opera- tors who believe their aircraft is ADS-B compliant. Upon further research and discussion, however, they discover that the aircraft is not in compliance. Some operators have equip- ment that meets the earlier DO-260A standard for ADS-B. “If an operator upgraded their equipment from 2012 through 2014, the standard for ADS-B at that time was DO-260A,” explained Matt Nelson, Duncan Aviation’s Satellite Operations Manager. “Since that time, the FAA and Civil Aviation authorities around the world agreed on the DO-260B standard for transponders. That means, equipment manufactured and installed before that agreement is not compliant with the January 1, 2020 mandate deadline; and the older transpon- ders do not use the predictive forecasting or annuncia- tors that are required by the DO-260B standard.” These transponders can be upgraded and brought into compliance by Duncan Aviation or the OEM. Call Sign Mismatch Issues According to James Kenney, an aviation safety inspec- tor with the FAA, another fairly common NPE is a Call Sign Mismatch (CSMM). This issue occurs when the aircraft identification listed in a flight plan does not exactly match the ADS-B transmitted identification. “In the lower 48 states, we are averaging about 17,500 Call Sign Mismatch events every month,” Kenney said. “And a large number of those likely involve business aircraft. We do not have any way to exactly differentiate business use as opposed to private use. But given that the majority of CSMM events involve aircraft using ICAO call signs, at least 80% of the 17,500 would involve business aviation.” CSMM errors can lead to significant operational dif- ficulties for air traffic controllers, including distraction and increased workload. The CSMM issue often occurs when an operator uses a specialized call sign that differs from the aircraft’s reg- istration number. These are sometimes used to desig- nate specialty operations like air ambulance flights, air Continued on page 33 31