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Mary Grady |
| Newswriter
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| Where Capstone Doesn't Go |
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Frustrated by a lack of options to keep his airplanes safe as traffic grows more dense over Denali National Park, air-tour operator R.D. Rosso walked out to his flight line one morning shaking a spray can of orange-day-glo paint. Soon the tail of his Cessna 206 had a brilliant new color scheme. "I hated to do it," he said. "But I had to try something, and this does seem to help."
Rosso, owner of Denali Air, said he'd be happy to be part of the Capstone program if it could offer him any help in collision avoidance, which he sees as the main danger to his pilots. "It's not a question of if there will be a midair out there," he said. "It's a question of when." More and more aircraft are converging on the same routes on the flanks of Mount McKinley every year, he said. The massive mountain, the highest in North America, reaches 20,300 feet MSL. Covered in ice and inaccessible by road, it's a spectacular and irresistible draw for tourists.
Pilot Larry Slone agreed that the congestion on the mountain flanks is getting worse. "The other day there were seven Navajos out there, all within a 10-mile radius or less," he said. Pilots tend to choose the same routes, constricted by weather, service ceilings, terrain, and turbulence. With each Navajo flying at about 200 mph, closing speeds are the blink of an eye.
"We need to know where the other guy is," Rosso said. The pilots communicate over a common frequency, but that's not enough. "The pilots are also watching the weather, the terrain, navigating, and flying a twin-engine airplane," said Slone. "And then the passengers want to talk to you," he said, which adds another distraction. Rosso said he has actively discouraged that. "Some operators advertise that the passengers have an intercom link to the pilot. We don't do that. Our pilots have enough to do."
What Rosso and Slone are looking for is an onboard traffic-alert system that would work in the remote regions where no radar or ATC or other ground-based systems are available. None of the systems they've looked at can do the job. They've experimented on their own with strobes and beacons. So far, orange-day-glo spray-paint is the most cost-effective anti-collision aid they've found.
With the escalating costs of insurance and maintenance, Rosso said, the future of the air-tour business in Alaska may be short, anyway. The Navajos on his flight line are 30 years old, and at some point he won't be able to keep them flying. He doesn't see any affordable airplanes in production now that could take their place. Rosso said he already is charging $240 for a one-hour flight, and if the price goes much higher, "This kind of operation will likely become a thing of the past. Economics will drive it out."
Rosso said that over this winter he plans to spray-paint the tails on the rest of his fleet. "It's something I can do on my own, without having to get FAA permission," he said, with a half-hearted smile. And he can only hope that it will make a difference in the crowded skies around Alaska's most famous mountain.
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| Capstone Includes Pax In "Circle of Safety" |
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Pilots and equipment are the focus of Alaska's safety efforts, but Capstone also has developed a strategy to address a component that is often overlooked -- the passengers. A consumer-education program called "Circle of Safety" aims to inform travelers about their rights and responsibilities when flying.
Training materials, brochures, public-service ads, and wallet cards disseminate the Circle of Safety message: Passengers can influence the safety of a flight by their own actions. For example, they should not pressure the pilot to fly in spite of bad weather, to carry a payload too heavy for the airplane, or to land at a runway that's too short. They shouldn't distract or disturb the pilot when he or she is busy, especially during takeoff and landing. They shouldn't "shop around" for a carrier who will take off despite the weather -- that rewards recklessness and intensifies the economic incentive to fly. "These pressures increase the risks already involved with flying in a harsh environment," the FAA says.
Passengers are encouraged not to be intimidated by pilots and to feel it is their right to ask questions about the safety of the flight. They should never assume that everything is all right, or that it's disrespectful to ask questions of the pilot. They have the right to ask if a flight plan has been filed, if the aircraft weight and balance is within limits, and if the aircraft is legal for flying at night or in clouds.
The FAA says passengers also should take responsibility for their own safety in case of an accident -- pay attention to the passenger briefing; dress warmly; and carry basic survival gear. They should always keep in mind that pilots are human and can make mistakes. For example, if a pilot seems tired or harried, a passenger should not hesitate to ask if he or she is comfortable with making the flight. "Informed and alert consumers can be influential in making flying safer in Alaska," the FAA says.
(From FAA's "Circle of Safety" Passenger Training Course)
There is a story about two moose hunters who are very successful on their hunt. They both get big bull moose and are very proud. A floatplane is scheduled to pick them up and they wait on the lakeshore for their ride. They have a mountain of gear, moose meat and antlers waiting beside them. The plane lands and taxis to shore. The pilot hops out, takes one look at all their gear and says, "I can't take all that in one trip, I'll have to take several loads." Both hunters insist that they could not afford to pay for extra trips. They tell the pilot, "Well, the carrier that picked us up last year took the same amount of gear!" The pilot reluctantly loads up the plane and they all get in. The pilot attempts a takeoff and makes it into the air but the airplane can't keep flying and they crash on the tundra. They all get out of the plane and the hunters say, "Hey, this pilot made it further than the last one did!"
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News Features
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It's not the bitter cold, or the freezing ice, or the chronic clouds that make flying in Alaska so different from everywhere else. It's not even the six months of murky darkness, when the arctic sun barely creeps above the gray horizon.
It's the emptiness.
"You can fly for miles and miles, hours and hours, and there is nothing out there," says Patrick Thurston, director of operations at Hageland Aviation Services, based at Anchorage International Airport. "Pilots everywhere have weather and night flying to deal with, but there's nothing like this in the Lower 48. There are great distances, no roads, and few people. You look down from the cockpit, and there are no lights, no cities or towns. Nothing."
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North America at night. Pretty dark in Alaska. (Click here for larger version.)
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Nothing means no navaids, no radar, no reliable weather reports, sometimes no communications, unless you catch an airliner passing overhead. It means runways are few and far between, and even then, most are short and unpaved -- 90 percent of the airports in southwest Alaska have gravel or dirt runways, and two-thirds are less than 3,000 feet long. It means the ground systems needed to fly safe instrument approaches are scarce. Airport crews are rarely on duty to report runway conditions or test for braking. Weather stations are 100 miles or more apart. And the primeval masses of mountains that lurk within the clouds and the dark are unmarked by lights or radio aids.
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Alaska's Capstone program utilizes new technology to enhance safety.
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That's why Thurston is happy to say that just about all of his 32 aircraft, from Cessna 172s to Caravans to Beech 1900s, take part in FAA's Capstone Safety Program. "We're the leader, as far as I know, in participation," Thurston told me, during a visit to Anchorage in August. His fleet runs a regular schedule to airfields all over western Alaska, to Nome and Barrow, to Aniak and Uklakleet, serving dozens of tiny rural communities that depend on aviation for connections to the world. "Capstone has made an immense difference," he said. "Our pilots now can accurately assess where they are, and that builds confidence. And that confidence is essential."
Clouds Full Of Rocks
That level of confidence from pilots and operators was a long time coming. Alaska spans 2,000 miles from east to west and 1,100 miles north to south, encompassing more than 650,000 square miles. It's one-fifth the size of the entire Lower 48 states, larger than the next three largest states combined. It's sparsely populated, with an average of one person per square mile, while the rest of the country averages about 70.
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En route to Anchorage via the flight levels, the late summer sun reflects off the mountain mists.
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Toss in wide tracts of glacial ice, mountain ranges, countless peaks above 10,000 feet, and variable weather. The coastal regions frequently bust VFR minimums, and pilots face flat-light and white-out conditions, fog, and ice fog. Icing levels are low, and darkness reigns for half the year. Even the long days of summer, which might seem a welcome respite, cause stress, because of the pressure on pilots and operators to make hay in all that sunshine.
Despite the challenging conditions, aviation is Alaska's lifeline. Everything that in the Lower 48 might move by truck or rail, in Alaska goes by air. Airplanes carry groceries, medicines, mail, building materials, livestock, and fuel. Fresh fish fill cargo bays at remote villages, bound for market. Medical evacuation flights are commonplace. Airplanes substitute for school buses in remote villages.
The dependence on aviation exerts pressure on the system to perform on-time and despite adverse weather. The absence of ground options for travelers also means a high dependence on commuter airlines, many of which operate single-engine, single-pilot VFR aircraft. The state has six times as many pilots, 14 times as many aircraft, and 76 times as many commuter flights per capita as the rest of the U.S. It also has a notoriously grim safety record.
"Popcorn Sacks And Wagon Tracks"
"We've all lost friends up here," Felix Maguire told me, as we talked on the ramp at Anchorage International Airport on a sunny August morning. Maguire, a former RAF pilot, recently retired from his corporate job flying a Citation jet. Of the commercial pilots who spend a 30-year career flying in Alaska, over 11 percent will perish in their aircraft, the FAA says. That compares to 2.5 percent of commercial pilots in the other 49 states. "We didn't want to just form another committee, and file another report that would gather dust on a shelf," Maguire said. "We had to do something." Everybody wanted action, everybody needed to see results.
The momentum for change got a kickstart from a 1995 NTSB study that raised a bunch of red flags about aviation safety in Alaska. (Click here for the 4 Mb report as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.) "The safety board's review of commuter airline, air taxi, and general aviation accidents in Alaska highlighted two accident types of major consequence: accidents during takeoff and landing, and accidents related to flying on visual flight rules into instrument meteorological conditions," the study said. The VFR-into-IMC flights caused the most fatalities, and were the leading safety problem for Alaska, the NTSB concluded.
"Underlying this problem," the NTSB said, "is the dependence of Alaskan commuter and air-taxi operations on VFR operations." And underlying that problem was the state's lack of infrastructure to support IFR flight. The NTSB named a long list of inadequacies: not enough navaid coverage; insufficient approach procedures at airports; and poor voice and radar capabilities for air traffic control. To create a safer system, Alaska should incorporate GPS and satellite technology to enhance its low-altitude IFR system, the NTSB said.
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Leonard Kirk of the University of Alaska Anchorage, John Hallinan of the FAA, and Felix Maguire of the Alaska Airmen's Association represent some of the stakeholders who worked together to create the Capstone program.
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Enter the Capstone program. "We wanted to do something that would really benefit these operators," says John Hallinan, program manager at the FAA's Anchorage office. "Not something like the carnival comes to town, then poof, they're gone, and there's nothing left but popcorn sacks and wagon tracks." To achieve that real benefit, the FAA worked to build a partnership with the aviation industry. Maguire, a director of the Alaska Airmen's Association, joined the effort. So did AOPA, the Alaska Air Carriers Association, the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), some avionics manufacturers, the U.S. Air Force, and more.
In its first phase, starting in 1999, Capstone installed advanced avionics equipment in 200 aircraft, mainly commuter, air taxi, and cargo carriers serving the Bethel aviation hub in a remote region of Southwest Alaska known as the Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta. Bethel -- one of the largest communities in Western Alaska, with about 6,000 residents -- lies 400 miles west of Anchorage. It serves as an administrative and transportation hub for 56 villages in the YK Delta.
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Capstone Phase 1 multi-function display.
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The Capstone equipment costs the operators nothing. A cockpit multi-function display, using GPS data and a moving map, shows pilots their location and graphically displays nearby terrain, other aircraft, and weather. Capstone also placed 11 small ground units -- each no bigger than a breadbox -- in the region to broadcast weather and flight information and provide radar-like surveillance of planes equipped with the new avionics. UAA tested the system and trained pilots to use it.
For pilots used to flying semi-blind, Capstone meant the difference between having to guess where they were -- and where the mountains and other airplanes might be -- and knowing their precise location relative to both traffic and terrain. For operators back at the home airport, it meant they could follow a flight from takeoff to landing, knowing exactly where their aircraft were at any point in time.
MFD, Meet DC-6
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Northern Lights Cargo DC-6. (Click here for larger version.)
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On the edge of the sprawling Anchorage airfield, Northern Air Cargo parks a fleet of aircraft, including an aged DC-6. Chief pilot Mike Moore led me up the rickety crew stairs for a look into the cramped, weathered cockpit. This airplane is all business, its well-worn metal showing 50 years of use. "Airplanes are the cars and trucks of Alaska," said Moore. "We carry everything that moves ... horses, cars, telephone poles, tons of fresh fish, drill rigs." Aft of the cockpit, behind a small door in a sturdy bulkhead, the cavernous cargo bay carries up to 28,000 pounds of payload.
Up front, the ancient half-moon yokes are surrounded by gauges and switches and dials crammed into every speck of panel and ceiling and bulkhead. Pilots spend countless hours here, flying past the Northern Lights in an Alaskan winter, or gazing out on endless mountains during the long summer days. It's chilling to imagine: The vast empty landscape below, the infinite stars in a cold night sky, the dim cockpit lights and the spinning props the only sign of life. The sturdy airplane with its four huge recips can operate in temperatures down to 45 below, Moore says, with the certainty of someone who's been there to confirm it.
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Capstone Phase 1 MFD in DC-6 cockpit. (Click here for larger version.)
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Tucked into a corner of the panel by the co-pilot's seat is a small glass multi-function display -- the Capstone screen -- which shows weather, traffic, and terrain. The system provides an "increased comfort level" to his pilots, Moore said. "It's hard to quantify the safety impact. But Capstone provides excellent situational awareness for the flight crews, and helps us to cope with the limited weather reporting and limited airport facilities. We're pretty excited about it. There's been a lot of cooperative effort between the FAA and the industry to make this happen. It took a lot of motivated people on all fronts."
The 40-Percent Solution
An FAA report released in May 2004 (550 Kb PDF file here) compiled the results of all that motivated effort: "Capstone-equipped aircraft have had a consistently lower accident rate than aircraft before Capstone and non-equipped aircraft during Capstone. From 2000 through the end of 2003 the rate of accidents for Capstone-equipped aircraft was lower by 40 percent ... Historically, the rate of Part-135 accidents within the YK Delta has been two to four times the rest of Alaska, but in 2003 the accident rate for the Delta was below the rest of the state for the first time."
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Capstone Phase II PFD and MFD.
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Phase II is now underway, expanding the program into Southeast Alaska, where different challenges loom. The area is more mountainous than the YK Delta, and the technology is evolving to include Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) capability. The newest rendition of the equipment employs an Electronic Flight Information System built by Chelton Flight Systems. Its primary flight display features real-time 3D terrain modeling, airspeed, groundspeed, altitude, altitude above ground, and many other types of information. A second display features an aeronautical chart that includes weather data and air traffic information. The chart displays the flight plan along with terrain and traffic near the aircraft's current altitude.
The equipment will permit aircraft to fly at new lower Minimum Enroute Altitudes, thus opening 41,000 feet of airspace over 1,521 nautical miles of existing routes, the FAA says. A Special Federal Aviation Regulation permits trained pilots to use the GPS receivers as the sole means for en route navigation in Alaska. This regulation is specific to Alaska. Capstone Phase II, like Phase I, will be offered to air carriers free of charge.
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Capstone Phase III will develop affordable systems for GA planes like this Cessna 180 testbed used by the University of Alaska at Anchorage.
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Now in development is Capstone Phase III. This next step in the system will make increased use of satellites to support reliable communications when ground facilities are out of range. Phase III also will work to develop various levels of the Capstone system that would make it affordable for GA pilots to buy their own equipment. Various options are being studied, from PDA-based systems, to flat-screen laptop computers, to fully mounted displays.
For Patrick Thurston, of Hageland Air, Capstone is "a magnificent resource."Bethel has a lot of air traffic. Low visibility, mist, and clouds are common there. The routes Hageland aircraft fly are remote and challenging. "With Capstone, we can fly more efficiently and more safely," he says. "It makes a difference, day in and day out."
More news features are available here.
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