ARW
120-Day Re-Assessment Plan
Site Visits
2.3.12 Kodiak Airport, Kodiak, AK
Background
A team visited the Kodiak Airport (ADQ) in Kodiak, AK, on May 27, 1997. The airport is designated as a Service Level B site. The NWS currently operates their weather office 24 hours a day and provides the official weather report. The NWS observers are co-located in the control tower. The NWS office is scheduled to reduce its hours of operation to 16 hours a day. The ASOS was commissioned January 1, 1997. The team toured the ASOS site and tower operations during their visit.
Currently the tower operates 16 hours a day. It is scheduled to convert to a contract tower in September, 1997. The tower prepares the Automatic Terminal Information Service broadcast using the ASOS observation. When the tower is closed, there is no weather available on the Automatic Terminal Information Service. During these hours, pilots can receive weather by calling the Kenai Automated Flight Service Station.
Data from the FAA Airport Master Record as of January 23, 1997 indicates a total of 20 aircraft are based at the Kodiak airport. Operations for the 12 months ending January 23, 1997 totaled 46,000 including 1,000 air carrier, 5,000 air taxi, 25,000 general aviation local, 5,000 general aviation transit, and 10,000 military.
There are five fixed base operators on the airport, mostly float planes with a few wheeled aircraft. Alaska Airlines is the only scheduled passenger carrying airline service, but there are scheduled aircraft freight operations at night utilizing jet aircraft.
Kodiak is situated in the Maritime Climatic zone that includes the Aleutian chain, the Southeast, and the South Central regions of the state. Precipitation is heavy, between 50 to 200 inches per year. The coastal areas experience frequent frontal activity. Icing, frontal zone turbulence, fog, snow and blowing snow are the major aviation hazards. Fall and winter bring frequent storms with accompanying high winds, and because of the unique terrain, turbulence is a common hazard. Freezing levels range from the surface up to 11,000 feet where inflight icing can pose a significant threat.
Participants
Two Coast Guard pilots, 25 pilots at Safety Meeting, FAA Tower Manager, and FAA/NWS team.
Synopsis of User Comments
This section of the report is a record of the comments received during the meetings, interviews and discussions that took place during the site visits. It is intended to present a summary of the input from the users on a particular subject. These comments may include technical inaccuracies and user perceptions that do not reflect actual conditions.
The first of the team’s two meetings started by joining a regularly scheduled safety meeting attended by about twenty-five pilots.
The following comments were received during this meeting -
"The controllers provide an additional margin of safety by giving us the winds from the shoreline wind sensor in addition to the ASOS winds."
"The ‘equal or better service’ promised by the FAA is not provided by the ASOS. In addition to this the NWS has a plan to be implemented sometime during the calendar year 1998 or 1999 to reduce their staffing hours from 24 to 16 hours a day."
"The ASOS does not see what the human sees. The human observer and the ASOS working together provides a better solution."
"We desire en-route information so that we can avoid adverse weather. In order to determine en-route weather, we use the nearest ASOS data."
"We depend on other pilots for weather. After the Flight Service Stations were closed, no one initiated or requested pilot reports. The pilot reports are just beginning to improve to the point where they are useful again. They rely heavily on the remarks in the weather reports."
"An increase from one mile to one and a quarter miles significantly improves airport operations, yet ASOS does not output a ‘special’."
"The ASOS is slow to react during rapidly changing weather. Hourly observations are seldom accurate between the hour, due to changing weather."
"ASOS does not meet the needs of the flying public because it did not overcome the impact of the terrain on the weather."
A representative from the NWS Regional Office stated that -
"There are four technicians for ASOS repair assigned to cover the State of Alaska. The original projection was one technician for 12 sites. However, the current feeling is one technician per six or seven sites is adequate. We now have 44 sites scheduled. With current staffing, we can commission no more than 24 sites total, we now have ten commissioned sites."
Many of the pilots stated -
"The (surface) winds are different at the center field ASOS as opposed to the shoreline winds."
"ASOS data was not representative for the area 20-40 miles away (for enroute flight)."
"ASOS is basically representative, but slow to react to rapidly changing weather."
"The wind sensor is not representative and is unreliable, for example, ASOS reports five knots when the wind sock is blowing straight out."
"The ASOS has no sense of airport operations going from VFR (visual flight rules) to IFR (instrument flight rules), for example, cloud height went from 900 feet to 1100 feet indiscriminately."
"Multiple sensors are required to provide an area of validity."
Following are comments from the weather observers -
"SPECIs (Aviation Selected Special Weather Report) override SPECIs before they can be transmitted. When the ASOS is placed in the manual mode, it will switch back to the automatic mode, which causes problems when the workload is high."
"There is a need for a simple way to transfer wind equipment to the FAA from NWS."
"Trend data would be valuable for interpreting future conditions."
"There is currently no GTA radio (ground-to-air transmitter) and no freezing rain sensor installed."
Second Meeting at ADQ with U.S. Coast Guard Pilots:
The team met with two Coast Guard pilots following the public meeting for their impressions of the ASOS. Both stated -
"They felt the ASOS was performing very well and they always call the public access number before flights."
"The ASOS was more generous on reporting measurements than they had anticipated."
"Maybe the ASOS was too honest and this was a factor in missed approaches."
"They felt the ASOS was accurate in reporting what it sees, however it sees only what is at the field. Humans may be too flexible; ASOS is not flexible."
"A meteorological discontinuity sensor would be helpful as well as a GTA (ground-to-air transmitter) when the tower is closed."
"The center field and shoreline winds were not the same, but they did not think this was major operational issue."
When the question of having a human being in the loop was asked, the pilots said that -
"The ‘who’ made all the difference in the world as to whether having a human in the loop was of value."
Information Provided
The re-assessment team provided a basic discussion on ASOS features and limitations. The team also addressed concerns that were brought up about other airports (Petersburg, Wrangell, and Dutch Harbor) that were not reporting representative weather. It was stated that these sites were Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) and not ASOS sites and explained the difference between them.
Issues Identified
Multiple issues were raised at Kodiak. The proposal to reduce the hours of the NWS office from 24 to 16 hours and the economic and operational implications this would have on the airport was the area of primary concern. Non-representative data was raised as an issue, specifically the wind reporting and the location of the sensor. The main issue voiced by the tower operators was the increased workload of updating the Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) when Aviation Selected Special Weather Reports (SPECIs) were generated by the ASOS. Airport operators also expressed apprehension over maintenance response times and the availability of personnel.