ERAM now IOC at four more ARTCCs, says FAA

Four of six air route traffic control centers the Federal Aviation Administration said last fall would gain initial operating capability with En Route Automation Modernization software have done so as of January, the FAA said in a statement.

In response to an inquiry, the FAA said ERAM is IOC at the Albuquerque, Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis ARTCCs, while the planned IOC at the Los Angeles and Oakland ARTCCs has been postponed until later "during the first part of this year."

ERAM replaces a three-decade old long-range radar tracking system known as Host. Once touted as an agency success, ERAM has in recent years run into troubles, with cost overruns likely to reach at least $330 million, according to FAA-accepted estimates.  

Even the planned December IOC at six ARTCCs was a delay of an earlier schedule obtained by FierceGovernmentIT through the Freedom of Information Act. In a terse response to questions, FAA officials said that ERAM implementation at each of the ARTCCS (there are 20 total) requires a  unique adaptation to installed software.

Legacy air traffic control systems, they said, were programed with the now-obsolete basic assembly or JOVIAL programming languages. In addition, air traffic control systems at various locations have been uniquely modified over time to accommodate regional conditions, such as geography, weather or unique air traffic. As a result, each addition of a new technology into an ARTCC required specialized code, FAA officials said in their response.

ERAM became IOC at the Salt Lake City and Seattle IOCs in 2009 and 2010, respectively, but in an Oct 5, 2011 hearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on aviation, Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel cast doubt on the software's ability to scale nationwide.

Air traffic controllers at Salt Lake City and Seattle have managed to use work-arounds to make ERAM work, Scovel said, but as ERAM rolls out to more complex ARTCCs, "controllers are not going to be able to engage the same work-arounds."

For more: 
- go to hearing webpage (transcript and archived video available)

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