The House of Representatives almost unanimously passed (396-10) the Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency (ALERT) Act on Tuesday. Assuming the bill survives a House/Senate reconciliation committee process, it means aircraft operating under Part 91 will have to have ADS-B In wherever ADS-B Out is now required. Portable ADS-B In devices will be allowed to cover that new requirement. According to AOPA, the House version also includes language that will ban the use of ADS-B Out signals to collect landing or other fees or “for anything other than its original purpose—safety and airspace efficiency.” AOPA said the provision is important to ensure compliance with ADS-B Equipage. “This bill is positioned to dramatically enhance aviation safety—as it ensures there is no disincentive for pilots to not use this important technology,” said AOPA’s VP of Government Affairs and Advocacy Jim Coon.
There is a lot for representatives and senators to talk about when they get together to agree on a final version of the Act. The ALERT Act was introduced shortly after the Senate-sponsored Rotorcraft Operations Transparency and Oversight Reform Act failed to pass the House, reportedly because of opposition from the Pentagon over provisions restricting the military’s ability to fly its helicopters with ADS-B turned off at their discretion for security reasons. The ALERT Act also requires airliners to equip with the next generation of onboard collision avoidance known as ACAS X, an updated version of TCAS that the NTSB said would have given a few seconds more warning to pilots of the regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter that collided over Washington, D.C., in 2025, killing all 67 people on board.
The same hole keeps getting ignored. The real unresolved traffic problem is below 400 feet AGL, in the drone band. Digital separation. Drone to drone, drone to manned aircraft. ALERT will turn into a burden rather than a fix.
How exactly is the ADS-B In requirement going to be enforced? Out is easy – if you aren’t broadcasting, the FAA can and will track you down. But In is obviosly receive-only, so how will they know (other than if you happen to file IFR without the correct equipment suffixes)? And will they add a new equipment suffix for portable In?
I would imagine it’s the same as 99% of other regs that we (usually) follow without oversight, either because it’s safer or just on the off chance that FAA will come do a ramp check after we land or have an accident/incident.
This is a step in the right direction. I chose to NOT equip my new homebuilt (currently in Phase One) with either a transponder nor ADSB-out due to concerns over privacy, security, over-zealous enforcement and billing concerns. I do have ADSB-in.
I know several others who have made similar decisions to not equip.
But I would equip with ADSB-in if the current laws are changed…
I want other pilots to see me, but I don’t want the general public to have the ability to get active notifications of my whereabouts when I am not home. This is a serious issue with respect to criminal activity in my area.
“This bill is positioned to dramatically enhance aviation safety”
How? The midairs weren’t happening to begin with, and ADSB was never conceived of for traffic avoidance. It takes a busy four-way stop intersection and replaced it with a light: more traffic but not fewer crashes. (This is borne our by the statistics, which had a minuscule number of midairs before the mandate so there wasn’t really much meat on that bone.)
There are still many, many planes which aren’t equipped and don’t need to be legally equipped, as well as a significant proportion of planes at any moment which have malfunctioning ADSB. An ADSB-In mandate is security theater, which is free for the regulator and costly for us.
Certainly, aviation safety can be improved through regulator action. But not by mandating we pay increasingly more money for ADSB.
Previous posters have made cogent points about this legislation’s lack of effectiveness, enforceability, or even applicability to the problems of low-level, multi-mode air traffic. As usual, it is merely performative window-dressing. And this is only the first pass through the legislative grinder.
“We have to protect our phony-baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this!” -Gov. Lepetomane, “Blazing Saddles”
If only politicians were held to the same principle as physicians: “First, do no harm.”
The traffic mix is changing faster in the drone layer than in the rest of aviation. That is the part many people keep skating past. Manned traffic is not growing at that rate. Drone traffic is.
Not bad, but I’d bet both planes involved in the (non-fatal) mid-air in Florida this week were both transmitting ADS-B out … If this bill fails and it begins to impact me, I’ll remove ADS-B out on my planes and avoid CBA, CCA.