Four years after the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that a national transponder code be set up specifically for gliders, the Federal Aviation Administration has finally gotten around to doing it. Effective March 7, gliders not in direct contact with an air traffic control facility will be encouraged — though not required — to use the transponder code 1202 instead of codes currently used by other small aircraft operating under visual flight rules. The VFRs effectively mean gliders are invisible to commercial airliner crews in the vicinity, since most of the lighter-than-air vehicles do not now carry transponders at all and are extremely difficult for the naked eye to spot.
Curiously, the FAA admits that its action followed from the need for a specific transponder code for gliders, which “operate under some flight and maneuvering limitations,” and was the result of “an accident, many incidents, and [the afore-mentioned] NTSB recommendation.” The accident was a 2006 collision involving a corporate Hawker jet and a private recreational glider operating near the busy Reno/Tahoe International Airport.
At the time, NTSB investigators stressed the need for a margin of safety beyond VFR, noting: “The concept of see-and-avoid is limited in preventing midair collisions due to the high speed of the aircraft involved.” However, despite the fact that nine people have died in glider-aircraft collisions over the past two decades, and that the NTSB recommended in 2008 that all gliders be required to carry transponders that enable other pilots to “see” them in the sky, the FAA has still not made it compulsory.
The latest official notice from Elizabeth Ray, vice president of the FAA’s Mission Support Services, Air Traffic Organization, sent to all air traffic control facilities in the United States, explained the reason for the code change: “[Gliders] may go from essentially stationary targets while climbing and thermaling to moving targets very quickly. They can be expected to make radical changes in flight direction to find lift and cannot hold altitude in a response to an air traffic control request.” That same reasoning could also be cited to support the NTSB’s common-sense recommendation that gliders be able to “squawk” their current position to other pilots on a continuous basis.
Although prohibited from flying in Class A airspace around major cities, there are many other areas in which gliders still share the sky with heavy, passenger-laden aircraft, including commercial jetliners. Last year, the FAA ordered a publicly funded airport in Southern California to reinstate 40 gliders it had evicted because of legitimate safety concerns — or risk losing its federal grants. And, since the FAA’s new 1202 code can only be used by gliders that already carry the equipment needed to broadcast it, the latest policy change is just a baby step in the right direction.
