Has the FAA Overlooked Multilateration in NextGen?

When the U.S. Air Traffic Control Association’s annual convention gets under way in Washington at the end of this month, the FAA is expected to come under fire for what one industry spokesman called “a totally erroneous statement, which it should publicly retract.” The statement appeared in the FAA’s ADS-B NPRM where, in its discussion of alternatives, the agency stated that “Multilateration would provide the same benefits as radar, but at higher cost.” According to industry officials interviewed by AIN who have installed multilateration networks as part of their ATC systems, a key advantage was that they were significantly less costly than radar for at least equal, but usually better and faster results. “Why else would so many countries be buying multilateration systems today, including the FAA in Colorado and Alaska?” asked one official, who added that the system was a logical stepping stone to full ADS-B “when the operational demand eventually arises.”