Home > About Adsystech > News > Adsystech’s Tom Doyle is Honored as a Member of Aircraft Vortex Spacing Team

Hampton, VA July 12, 2001 --- Thomas M. Doyle, Adsystech Site Coordinator and Air Traffic Control consultant at NASA-Langley Research Center, was honored as a member of the Aircraft VOrtex Spacing System (AVOSS) Team, which was selected to receive NASA’s Group Achievement Award.

The Team was honored for "significant team achievement in the multidisciplinary development and international industry demonstration of an Aircraft Vortex Spacing System" at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). AVOSS is a major element of the Terminal Area Productivity (TAP) Program. It was developed to provide significant contributions to the nation’s air traffic capacity initiatives by providing safe aircraft spacing criteria to ATC, and to eliminate capacity wasted by current spacing criteria that is over-conservative in most weather conditions. The AVOSS system is inherently a complex, multidisciplinary integration of meteorological sensors and modeling, wake vortex characterization and behavior prediction, wake vortex sensing, distributed computer networks, and ATC procedural coordination.

The coordinated efforts of this team produced an AVOSS system that operated at DFW from late 1997 through the summer of 2000, culminating in an internationally attended live demonstration of AVOSS in July 2000. Over 100 senior representatives from airlines, FAA Air Traffic and supporting organizations, manufacturers, and airports attended the AVOSS demonstration. This degree of success and recognition would not have been possible without the dedication, hard work, and team efforts.

The Team was honored at the NASA Langley Research Center’s 2001 Annual Honor Awards Ceremony held today in the H.J.E. Reid Auditorium. We salute Tom Doyle and the other members of the AVOSS Team.