Liberty University School of Aeronautics is one of the earliest adopters of new air traffic control technology that is part of a national initiative to upgrade aviation safety operations. Well before 2020 — when the Federal Aviation Administration requires all aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B Out technology that allows for improved ground-to-air broadcasting of plane positions in order to fly in certain airspace — Liberty invested heavily in the tool, using data-driven research to justify the cost.
The new technology uses GPS data for broadcasting the location of an aircraft and, in the future, could replace radar as the main surveillance method for controlling aircraft across the globe.
The FAA featured Liberty as a frontrunner in the use of this new technology in the January/February issue of its Safety Briefing magazine. FAA staff also filmed interviews with Liberty instructors and pilots about the successful implementation of the technology.
In 2016, Liberty equipped its fleet — about 25 aircraft — with ADS-B In/Out (“In” means a user can see the air traffic in their own system; “Out” means the service allows aircraft to be tracked by other systems). The university studied a decade’s worth of data on fatal instructional airplane accidents, which revealed that midair collisions were the second leading cause of deaths. Liberty’s administration, in considering that its students log approximately 14,000 training flight hours per year, decided to invest in the technology for flight training and aircraft operations.
Liberty continued the safety research and in January partnered with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Air Safety Institute to release a comprehensive, 16-year study on the causes of fatal flight training accidents. Researchers, including Liberty SOA Director of Safety and Adjunct Professor Andrew Walton and aviation student Carl Baumann, analyzed 240 fatal instructional accidents in piston engine airplanes from 2000-15 that resulted in 432 fatalities. Walton hopes the study can help flight schools and training organizations “target how they can improve awareness and training in regard to the risks of loss of control and midair collisions,” the two greatest risks in flight training, according to the study’s findings.
Liberty University won the American Airlines Safety Award at the National Intercollegiate Flying Association National SAFECON competition three years in a row, the only school in history to earn the honor for three straight years.
