Hill: Pilots need cockpit technology to detect volcanic ash

Airline pilots lack the technology and information necessary to fly safely through volcanic ash clouds and organizations must research how to provide the tools to do so, aviation professionals said on Wednesday.

Witnesses and lawmakers at a House Science and Technology subcommittee hearing said the number of incidents involving volcanic ash is small, but when they do occur they are costly and dangerous. Last month's eruption in Iceland caused airlines to lose $1.7 billion in revenues The damage to aircraft can be costly as well, as ash clouds can cause jet engines to shut down and windshields to erode.

"The first priority should be developing technology both onboard and in the air traffic control system to get pilots real-time accurate information" about the effects volcanic ash might have on equipment, said Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, the subcommittee's ranking member.

Pilots don't have access to useful real-time data on potentially hazardous situations thatvolcanic ash causes, said Capt. Linda Orlady, executive air safety vice chairwoman at the Air Line Pilots Association. Pilots often don't fully trust the information available because it is interpreted using different methods, she added.

NextGen, the Federal Aviation Administration's $20 billion program to replace the nation's aging radar-based air traffic control system with a satellite-based network by 2020, will improve information sharing by presenting available data in a way that users can easily understand, said Victoria Cox, senior vice president for NextGen and operations planning services at FAA's Air Traffic Organization.

"While we're not focusing on onboard sensors, we are focusing on delivering better information to pilots, controllers and dispatchers so they all have the same information at the same time and can work collaboratively to make decisions," she said.

Lawmakers questioned whether federal agencies are effectively collaborating to bring pilots the technology necessary to detect ash clouds and their potential effects directly from the cockpit.

Agencies are working together to coordinate research on these systems and they are collecting input from users early in the development process, said Jack Kaye, associate director for research at NASA's Space Mission Directorate in the Earth science division. The space agency, which provides a large amount of satellite data to aviation, also has hosted a workshop with users to better understand their specific needs.

NASA is researching onboard technologies, some of which have the potential to detect ash, that would provide better information about weather, said Tony Strazisar, senior technical adviser at NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. But he cautioned that capability is not the systems' primary purpose.

Cox told lawmakers that FAA's method of dealing with volcanic ash is to avoid it. The agency treats ash clouds like any other major weather event, she added. If pilots choose to fly, then air traffic controllers will direct them around the ash clouds as best they can.

"It will never be acceptable to simply see how close to an ash cloud we can fly and hope for the best," Orlady said.

FAA announced on Monday the launch of a new system that delivers computer-generated safety information to pilots. The digital notices to airmen system, installed at the Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey, sends information about airport conditions simultaneously to air traffic management systems nationwide and integrates easy-to-read data directly into cockpit displays.

According to FAA, the technology will be available soon at Washington Dulles, Reagan National, Baltimore-Washington International, Chicago O'Hare and Memphis' Midway airports, as well as airports in Richmond, Va.; Norfolk, Va.; Denver; Fairbanks, Alaska; and Fort Wayne, Ind.