that one person would accept a sense of ownership for the effectiveness of the FAA's aviation weather system.

Advantages. As discussed under Alternative 7, developing a single FAA position on broad aviation weather issues sometimes involves the offices of several FAA associate administrators. Officials from the NWS, other federal agencies, and user groups are often frustrated when they try to resolve aviation weather issues because there is no single point of contact within the FAA who can bring issues to closure. Therefore, in addition to the advantages described under Alternative 1, this alternative would (1) improve aviation weather leadership and focus within the FAA, (2) improve the FAA's ability to resolve aviation weather issues in a timely fashion, (3) reduce the frustration currently experienced by outside agencies and the private sector when attempting to resolve aviation weather issues with the FAA, and (4) facilitate efforts by the FAA to carry out its existing memorandum of agreement with NOAA.

Disadvantages. Alternative 2 shares most of the disadvantages listed for Alternative 1. Although Alternative 2 would improve leadership within the FAA regarding the provision of aviation weather services, it does not address interagency issues.

Alternative 3. Shift additional federal responsibilities for aviation weather services and related research to the FAA. The FAA would be assigned greater responsibility for providing aviation weather services, including some or all of those now provided by the NWS, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other civilian agencies. Thus, this alternative actually encompasses a range of options, depending upon the extent to which aviation weather functions are transferred to the FAA from other agencies.

Advantages. In the extreme case, the FAA would assume complete responsibility for directly providing aviation weather services. This would clearly consolidate within a single agency complete responsibility for providing needed leadership, focus, and prioritization for aviation weather services and related research. This would also give the FAA administrator direct control of the assets needed to improve aviation weather services and enhance the safety and efficiency of the national airspace system. More restrained versions of this alternative would share this advantage, although not to the same degree.

Disadvantages. The FAA does not currently possess the meteorological facilities or personnel needed to significantly increase its direct responsibility for providing aviation weather services and related research. This alternative would also create the need for the FAA to provide functions that the NWS currently provides. Doing this would involve transferring personnel and equipment from the NWS to the FAA. However, the NWS would need to retain some of the facilities and personnel that support aviation weather because they also support nonaviation meteorological services. Thus, the FAA would probably need to duplicate some of the functions that the NWS would retain.

With regard to research and development, the FAA does not have the scientific personnel and facilities to conduct the type of basic and applied research programs that NOAA and NASA currently conduct in support of aviation weather. Also, because many of the research programs in NOAA and NASA also support atmospheric science research that has widespread application beyond aviation, consolidating research and development within the FAA would also increase interagency duplication of effort.

Alternative 3 might foster a long-term roles and missions dispute among involved agencies, and approval would require concurrence by numerous congressional committees to reallocate federal responsibilities. Also, even if this approach improved aviation weather services, the duplication of services would increase overall costs. Thus, for budgetary and other reasons, this alternative seems impractical.

Alternative 4. Shift additional federal responsibilities for aviation weather services and related research to the NWS. This option is identical to Alternative 3, except that civil aviation weather services would be consolidated (wholly or in part) within the NWS rather than the FAA.

Advantages. Alternative 4 would increase the extent to which responsibility for aviation weather resides within the meteorological community. As a result, it would facilitate improvements to meteorological functions and weather products associated with aviation weather.

Disadvantages. Because of the NWS's inherent focus on meteorology, this alternative might reduce the extent to which new aviation weather services and products support nonmeteorological users of aviation weather information (e.g., pilots, dispatchers, and air traffic controllers). As discussed in Chapter 3 (pages 38 and 39), aviation weather services would benefit from a greater focus on user needs, which this approach is unlikely to provide.

Transferring some or all of the FAA's aviation weather responsibilities to the NWS would involve the transfer of appropriated funds from the Department of Transportation/FAA to the Department of Commerce/NOAA/NWS. Aviation weather would then compete for these funds against other interests within the Department of Commerce. The overall level of aviation weather activities would suffer if federal or congressional

Front Matter (R1-R10)

Summary (1-8)

Chapter 1: Introduction (9-13)

Chapter 2: Current Roles and Missions (14-21)

Chapter 3: Current Services (22-40)

Chapter 4: Research and Development (41-47)

Chapter 5: Regional Requirements (48-51)

Chapter 6: Future Roles and Missions (52-60)

Chapter 7: The First Step (61-62)

Appendix A: Summary of Findings and Recommendations (63-68)

Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members (69-71)

Appendix C: Participants in Committee Meetings (72-73)

Appendix D: Reference Documents for Current Roles and Missions (74-81)

Appendix E: ASOS Assessment (82-85)

Appendix F: General Aviation Flight Scenarios—1994 and 2015 (86-89)

Appendix G: Federal Funding (90-92)

Appendix H: Research Documents and Organizations (93-95)

Appendix I: Detailed Assessment of User Needs in Alaska (96-106)

Appendix J: Alternative Approaches for Improving Aviation Weather Services and Research (107-109)