rotorspeed,
You are right it is up to us, but the path is uphill!
It could start with an application from us, asking for approval for a particular system, but that would not get a new type of system approved, because it would be called a "special" and therefore a one-off. Each subsequent "special" would have to be approved from scratch at each location, as if the previous ones had never been done. This means special judgements, and no promise of capability until the procedure is done at each place.
To avoid that nonsense, we have to get a system (nav system, approach method, clear zones, geographic boundaries, obstruction clearances, publications) defined in the regulations as a normal one (like ILS, etc) so that rules would be codified and easily applied to each place.
New types of projects are hard to get approved right now. Since the FAA has embarked on a quest for a WAAS and a LAAS system approval, their funds and people are all tied up on these, neither of which has much applicability to us. They are not very useful to us because of the horribly bureaucratic means the FAA have applied to get these done, where the actual capability of the system is a fall-out, not a goal, of the system. (ie, the WAAS will get approved, we will tell you what the minumums are later, thank you very much. and oh, by the way, it will not be a good precision approach, but isn't that just too bad?)
The problem is simple, and we are bound to be miserable for a few more decades. What is the problem? The FAA owns the air, not us. If the Post Office invented email, we would be pasting stamps onto our monitors. If the Food and Drug Administration invented CAT scans, they would be housed inside old battleships. If the cell phone network were invented by the Feds, call phones would need small carts to drag the around. Innovation is brought about not by governments, but by enterprise, with operators and manufacturers all locked into commercial ventures to produce stuff and make it simple, safe, effective and operable.
In short, the FAA has exclusive rights to invent new procedures, and they couldn't find an inventor in the entire organization, with a microscope. No FAA guy will ever lose his job if he never invents another thing. Ergo, nothing will get done. Nothing, until we get the FAA to cede the creativity back to industry, and let us break loose with the technologies that have been around for a decade. The FAA would certainly have to ride shotgun on us, making sure it was safe. That is and should always be their job.
We are trying, I get fired up once per year! Maybe this thread will help.
Last edited by NickLappos; 12th February 2005 at 22:07.