Prior to a couple of months ago, I had never heard the acronym “AWOS”, let alone knew we had an AWOS problem in Alaska or that an AWOS was related to life and safety – something about which we all care tremendously.
So, what is the meaning of an A-W-O-S? Those four letters stand for Automated Weather Observing System. AWOS sites are maintained by the FAA and provide aviation weather data. At rural airports in Alaskan communities that rely on air transport, timely information is critical. It is worth reminding ourselves that well over 100 villages spread across our state have runways but no year-round roads in or out or other alternative means of transportation for long distances.
AWOS equipment transmits real-time observations of conditions like wind speed, cloud ceilings, temperature, and visibility to pilots. This information is essential for safety when flying small aircraft into remote, off-the-road villages in Alaska.
Why is this relevant to the work in Juneau?
Because Alaskans live in communities that depend on small planes to access medical care, food, mail, supplies, to get where they need to go, and to connect with the rest of the state. When an AWOS malfunctions or stops working altogether, the impact cannot be taken lightly. Interruptions to air travel can seriously impact health, well-being, and quality of life.
Unfortunately, over 30% of AWOS in rural Alaska have been, and are, suffering full or partial outages on any one given day due to aging equipment and lack of maintenance. Outages mean pilots have less information to evaluate flight safety, increasing risks to the communities they serve and to those in the aircraft. Service to destinations is cancelled or postponed when weather data is unavailable.
Spare me a moment to give you a little data and refrain from skimming past it because it really drives the point home. In 2021, ProPublica and Unalaska public radio station KUCB analyzed the number of deaths in the United States resulting from small aircraft crashes and found that, since 2016, 42 percent of these crashes occurred in the state, compared to 26 percent in the early 2000s. A functional AWOS at every rural airport is critical to life and safety.
How did your’s truly come across this basic infrastructure malfunction?
As chair of the Alaska Food Strategy Task Force, I monitor the work of our committees as we focus on increasing food security. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee discovered this detrimental barrier when studying food distribution across the state. It turns out, because of AWOS outages, a huge amount of food spoils and is wasted before it reaches its intended destination. In conversations with those involved in the supply chain, this breakdown was one that should and could be remedied.
What can the legislature do to help remedy the problem?
In subsequent conversations about the topic, I learned that it just so happens that FAA’s current reauthorization is about to expire, and the new FAA Reauthorization Act is under negotiations in Congress. If you know me, you perhaps can guess my next move – at least in general terms.
How about a play-by-play?
I then sent a note to Sen. Bishop at the next Department of Transportation Senate Finance Subcommittee requesting he ask the department the condition of AWOS at rural airports. The answer: not good; one in three experiencing outages. Senator Dunbar is in that meeting; hold that thought.
I’m then on the phone lickety-split with our federal delegation. They indeed are aware of the problem and have been working on and would like to see language included in the bill to address it.
Next move: because we’re past the date for filing personal legislation, I asked Chair Senator Dunbar of the Senate Community & Regional Affairs (which handles issues impacting rural communities) if he’d be willing to file a resolution urging specific AWOS remedies to be included in Congress’s FAA Reauthorization Act. I explained we could send the resolution after it passes to the two US Senators and two US House Members to work out the final language in their conference committee. The chair said yes.
Thanks to Mike Jones, PhD with ISER on our task force, and after conversations with several experts in the field, we compiled language that included specific remedies, provided it to Senator Dunbar’s office, and the legislative drafters did their magic.
SJR 20 was filed April 3, heard in committee April 9 and 16, and is up for a vote today in the Senate. It will then move over to the House where we hope it will move quickly and pass. Our hope is to have it in the hands of the FAA Reauthorization Act Conference Committee in Washington, DC the early part of May.
And what, you may ask, are some of those specific solutions urged in the resolution?
To help restore AWOS coverage, here are some of the items the Alaska State Legislature is urging Congress to include in their bill:
(1) Require the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure the reliability AWOS and ASOS stations or other approved weather system technologies used at airports;
(2) Require the Federal Aviation Administration to take actions necessary to restore the full functionality and connectivity of weather station equipment and the associated telecommunications systems;
(3) Require the Federal Aviation Administration to publish on a publicly available Internet website a dashboard with ASOS and AWOS real-time status updates;
(4) Require the Federal Aviation Administration to include communications outages in its Notices to Air Missions;
(5) Require the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Weather Service to improve AWOS and ASOS spare part availability;
(6) Authorize the Federal Aviation Administration to, by regulation, provide for telecommunications redundancy via low-Earth orbit satellite Internet connectivity, or other approved weather technology, on all AWOS and ASOS stations in the state, as a backup to landline connectivity;
(7) Authorize the Federal Aviation Administration to, by regulation, approve commercially available, aviation-specific weather reporting systems that could be installed at lower cost and used as backups or as replacements;
(8) Establish, by regulation, an AWOS and ASOS team specifically for the state, dedicated to keeping weather systems in the state operational; and
(9) Allow the Federal Aviation Administration to, by regulation, authorize the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to maintain AWOS and ASOS stations or other weather system technology.
And in wrap-up
Although the FAA Alaska team is dedicated to resolving AWOS issues in Alaska, it is time for those at the high level of FAA on the East Coast to understand the ramifications of doing nothing, be tasked to oversee the corrections, and ensure the team here is equipped with what is needed to get the job done.
We will soon be providing our suggested specific solutions to Congress – to the actual members finalizing the language. I am proud of and thankful for all those who have contributed to this effort. For fear of leaving someone out, you know who you are. Hopefully before long, your reward will be greater air transport reliability and improved safety that will benefit our rural residents.
In wrap-up, this AWOS effort goes to show that there’s never a dull moment in the Capitol, one can learn something new in this work every day, and solutions take collaboration and persistence.
