Aviation Weather

FAA Needs to Resolve Questions Involving the Use of New Radars Gao ID: RCED-90-17 October 12, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information about the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) progress in disseminating hazardous weather data from three new weather-related systems, focusing on: (1) FAA progress in preparing the necessary operational procedures for the Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR-9) weather channel and the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR); and (2) the status and availability of weather services FAA intended to provide through the Aeronautical Data Link.

GAO found that FAA: (1) did not implement formal procedures for transmitting ASR-9 weather data from controllers to pilots, although the first ASR-9 radar was operational and FAA planned to deploy additional radars; (2) believed that controllers needed to experience basic changes in ASR-9 precipitation detection capabilities before it issued formal procedures, and did not believe that the absence of operational procedures hindered controllers' use of ASR-9, although controllers lacked guidance regarding how often to use ASR-9 or how to interpret the precipitation display; (3) did not require controllers to use ASR-9 weather information to reroute planes, although the improved weather detection capability could help controllers anticipate the need to reroute planes around adverse weather; (4) planned to install the first TDWR unit by June 1993, and install 47 additional units over the following 3 years; (5) is evaluating data dissemination procedures as part of its TDWR operational testing, since it and the airline industry are concerned about the adequacy of using its current, less capable weather system's procedures to alert pilots of events identified by TDWR; and (6) planned to provide hazardous weather advisories through its Aeronautical Data Link, although its significant delay, due to its reliance on other delayed information systems, could require additional operational testing.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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