Washington, DC, September 12, 2019 – RTCA’s Program Management Committee (PMC) held its fall meeting approving three critical guidance documents, reviewing workplans for the Special Committees (SC), and incorporating changes to the various committee Terms of Reference (TOR) that reflect leadership and work plan changes.

Chaired by Chris Hegarty of The MITRE Corporation, the 19-member PMC is the RTCA oversight body charged with producing timely and robust standards and guidance documents to ensure interoperability of aviation systems and equipment. The standards encourage innovation and serve as the basis for meeting Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. An important responsibility of the PMC is ensuring the operational application of the technical standards.

The Members of the PMC approved three standards covering the following areas:

• Safety and Performance Requirements Standard for Air Traffic Data Link Services in Continental Airspace (Continental SPR Standard) needed a change to remove any reference to DM89 MONITORING message element as being required to support any datalink operations to make the document consistent with actual datalink procedures. It was prepared by SC-214 (Standards for Air Traffic Data Communications Services).
• The Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Airborne Collision Avoidance System X (ACAS X) (ACAS Xa and ACAS X0) needed important corrections and clarifications, primarily contained in the MOPS tests (primarily with Section 2.4).  This set of changes is highly desirable for FAA Aircraft Certification so that it can be cited in its ACAS Xa TSO which is scheduled for comments release in the October/November timeframe.  It was prepared by SC-147 (Aircraft Collision Avoidance Systems).
• Aviation Profiles for Internet Protocol Suite specifies the unique adaptations required to enable the current Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comment (RFC) documents to specify technical requirements for Aeronautical data communications between an aircraft system and its corresponding peer host systems on the ground. It wasprepared by SC-223 (Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) and Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS)).
  Three special committees received approval for changes to their work plans.  These included SC-223 – Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) and Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS),

SC-228 – Minimum Performance Standards for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, and SC-229 – 406 MHz Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs).

Details from the September 12, 2019 PMC meeting are contained in a letter from Chairman Hegarty to FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, Ali Bahrami.