I Think I Can’t
This is the fourth post in a series on the two-decade resistance to ADS-B In, the technology the NTSB says would have prevented the Flight 5342 collision (part one: The Original Sin).
In The Original Sin, I mentioned the FAA’s first notice of proposed rulemaking on ADS-B in 2007. It’s the one that started before Spencer was born and inexplicably required that aircraft broadcast their position with ADS-B Out without requiring the corresponding ADS-B In technology that would actually help pilots avoid collisions.
When this notice dropped, it didn’t take long for the aviation industry interests to put The ADS-B In Resistance Playbook into motion. On just day 14 of the comment period, a group of five industry organizations, including the American Airlines-backed Air Transport Association of America (now Airlines for America, or A4A) and the Regional Airline Association (RAA), asked for more time. (Play 2: Never miss an opportunity to buy time.) The FAA granted a 60-day extension.
The request made little mention of safety and instead focused on implementation obstacles and, of course, money. The signatories needed time, they said, to develop “as much information as possible as to future costs.”
As I’ve mentioned previously, Spencer loved trains. There was an animated adaption of the book “The Little Engine That Could” that he would watch over and over when he was a young boy. One of his favorite quotes was when an older train gives the little engine these words of advice:
If you think you can, you will. If you think you can’t, you won’t. Either way, you’re right.
The simple principle applies to aviation safety as well and was on full display during the ADS-B Out rulemaking process.
The FAA proposed a January 1, 2020, deadline for aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B Out. Twelve years.
Imagine what the airline industry could accomplish in 12 years if there were an opportunity to increase profits. I have little doubt that they would move mountains and proactively push the FAA to keep pace with the needs of industry.
But with ADS-B Out, they threw sand in the gears of progress for more than a decade.
When A4A provided comments on the ADS-B Out rule in March 2008, they shared an audacious plan to run Play 2 (buy time) again. They asked the FAA to issue a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking and break the process into a two-phased rollout. Other industry interests again joined the chorus, including the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), which called on the FAA to “go back to the drawing board.”
Under a two-phased approach, phase one would be more of a show and tell than a mandate. The industry would be given time to demonstrate and evaluate ADS-B Out technology. Only after that additional opportunity for stalling would a mandate be considered in phase two. But, of course, phase two would need its own separate comment period for them to pick away at the ADS-B Out requirement a little bit more before a firm requirement was even finalized.
Institutionalized delay as an art form.
Thankfully, the FAA stuck with its single-phase approach for ADS-B Out. But that didn’t stop the industry from running Play 2 some more times. For example, when the rulemaking committee issued its report in 2008, it recommended that the FAA’s 2020 deadline be contingent on eight different projects that a big bureaucracy like the FAA might easily screw up or run late on. The committee wanted the 2020 mandate pushed out if the FAA missed even one of them.
Even though ADS-B Out was the focus of the 2007–2008 rulemaking process, the industry interests still used the opportunity to run Play 4 (Define the decision criteria on your terms) a bit more on ADS-B In as part of their comments.
Having framed the ADS-B In question as a business case for aircraft operators rather than a safety case for passengers, aircraft operators then set to work making the business case fail.
Even though some operators such as UPS were already outfitting aircraft with ADS-B In with cockpit display of traffic information at the time, and presumably had receipts, A4A told the FAA in March 2008 that “any current estimate for retrofitting ADS-B In is speculative,” and then went on to speculate that the cost would approach $1 million per airplane.
Three years later, the industry’s own committee, using cost data from Boeing and Airbus, showed that the basic traffic-display version of ADS-B In could actually be as low as $130,000 per aircraft for new deliveries and maxed out at $700,000 even in the most complex situation, retrofitting an aircraft that was no longer in production. And this didn’t even account for the impact that a federal mandate would have on driving down costs once avionics manufacturers had guaranteed product demand.
Today, a February 2026 trade-press estimate places the cost of upgrading a narrow-body aircraft to ADS-B In at between $50,000 and $150,000 — one-seventh to one-twentieth of A4A’s 2008 estimate.
AOPA was running its own version of Play 4 for smaller aircraft. It pegged the cost of ADS-B In for smaller general aviation aircraft at “at least $16,000.” But this was the worst case scenario, where every plane required a new certified screen. Many did not. Three years later, the industry’s own committee counted more than 74,000 aircraft that already had a screen and could be upgraded to ADS-B In for between $2,000 and $4,000 per aircraft. I wouldn’t call this negligible, but for someone with the means to own a personal aircraft, I think it’s a reasonable price of admission to fly through busy airspace alongside aircraft carrying hundreds of people.
Today, it’s possible for operators of smaller aircraft to buy an ADS-B In device that works with a smartphone or tablet for about $400, plus a tablet app subscription.
The ADS-B Out rulemaking committee included one final gift for itself in its 2008 report to the FAA. Rather than winding itself down once its ADS-B Out recommendations were complete, it asked the FAA to keep it alive “to take advantage of this knowledge base to develop the positions that define the ADS-B In applications.” The FAA granted this wish in 2010.
Do you think the guiding theme of these future ADS-B In discussions was: “I think I can,” or “I think I can’t?”
Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.
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