Countywide : Aircraft Tracking Plan Draws Fire

The use of computer systems based on old technology could make a planned new Southern California aircraft tracking facility obsolete even before it opens, the U.S. General Accounting Office said in a report issued this week.

As a result, air traffic controllers may find their radar screens flickering, showing insufficient data or blanking out at key moments, the report states.

The report, prepared for congressional subcommittees reviewing the Federal Aviation Administration’s appropriations requests, criticizes the agency for not heeding a similar GAO report last year that singled out the Los Angeles-Orange County airspace for having the nation’s worst computer-related aircraft tracking problems.

The latest report also echoes last year’s National Transportation Safety Board study showing that the Los Angeles-Orange County area leads the nation in midair near-collision reports and depends in part on an outdated, inadequate FAA radar facility at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station known as Coast Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON.

FAA officials said Tuesday that they are analyzing the new GAO report and have no formal reply.

At an estimated cost of $114 million, the FAA plans to consolidate radar tracking facilities at Los Angeles, Burbank, El Toro and Ontario by moving operations to Miramar, near San Diego, by 1995.

The GAO report, entitled “Air Traffic Control--Inadequate Planning Increases Risk of Computer Failures in Los Angeles,” states that FAA officials have refused to consider steps that would solve the computer capacity problem because the agency does not want to rewrite or develop software to run on new, state-of-the-art hardware, because of the “additional time they believe would be required to undertake such an effort.”

The GAO study also accused the FAA of deliberately refusing to use proper growth rates for projecting future air traffic without documenting the reasons for doing so, leading to false conclusions that the planned upgrades will take care of future needs through the year 2000.

The report adds that the FAA’s planned computer upgrades “are based on 1960s technology with limited performance capabilities.”