You probably read one or more breathless mass-media stories on May 22 or thereabouts, as FAA announced the completion of two years of testing of transmitting pre-departure clearances (PDCs) from control towers at Memphis and Newark to cockpit flight management systems (FMSs) of passenger and cargo planes waiting to push back at those two airports. A great step forward for NextGen! The wave of the future arriving today! And soon to be rolled out to three more airports by year-end: Houston Hobby, Houston Intercontinental, and Salt Lake City. And by the end of 2016, it will be in place at 56 airports.
What you almost certainly did not read was the reaction of a whole cadre of ATC experts, such as one that was shared with me on May 22nd:
"FAA finally is implementing a basic Data Link service, for trajectory exchange between aircraft FMSs and [air traffic services] . . . and only 25 years after we already developed it, proved it, and implemented it with FANS 1, for the entire rest of the world's use, even making it standard in long-range fleets."
There is no question that digital PDCs save time and reduce errors, compared with voice communication by radio. And those benefits will be far greater when controller-pilot data-link (CPDLC) is rolled out to the FAA's 20 en-route centers. Unfortunately, that is not scheduled to happen until 2021. Meanwhile, Nav Canada has implemented en-route CPDLC nationwide and across the North Atlantic.
