The FAA recently published more details about its $500 ADS-B Rebate program, which is expected to come online in late September. The incentive program is designed to help general aviation aircraft owners meet the ADS-B Out mandate ahead of the 2020 deadline, and to help with equipment and installation costs.
Rebates will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis for one year from the fall 2016 launch or until 20,000 are claimed, whichever comes first, according to FAA officials.
While the ADS-B rebate Program Reservation System is not yet available, you can start the rebate process now by doing the following:
- Review and validate the aircraft owner and aircraft-specific information in the FAA’s Civil Aircraft Registry (CAR). The FAA will determine rebate program eligibility using the information submitted in the CAR, and all rebates will be mailed to the aircraft owner recorded in the CAR.
- Visit the Equip ADS-B website to research eligible equipment and learn more about the ADS-B Out rule at FAA.gov/go/equipadsb.
- Locate an authorized installer and determine the specific aircraft requirements to ensure that the installation will be performed in accordance with applicable FAA regulations and will meet the requirements in the General Aviation ADS-B Rebate Program Rules. The ADS-B equipment may be purchased now, but the ADS-B installation must occur after the FAA’s program website is launched this fall to be eligible for the rebate.
For more details about the rebate, visit the FAA’s ADS-B rebate page at FAA.gov/go/rebate. You can click the subscribe button in the upper right corner to receive future updates on the rebate program via email.
This FAA “ADS-B faux subsidy” program is an insult to both taxpayers and aircraft owners alike. Only a poorly informed gullible pilot would fall for this FAA ruse .
Not only do real ADS-B installations cost far more than this (for a good sensible avionics install upgrade an ADS-B install typically cost in a range of a factor of 10 to 100 times more than this ridiculous FAA bribe to equip. But worse yet, even if FAA’s ADS-B was given away free, FAA’s ADS-B is the wrong thing to do, for the wrong reason, for both aircraft operators and ANSPs.
FAA’s faulty ADS-B is vastly “over-specified”, excessively costly, doesn’t work properly, exchanges the wrong data, compromises both security and privacy, and is way out of balance with the N and C components of C-N-S. FAA’s ADS-B (vice the better form of ADS already used in places like Australia or Canada – e.g., allowing any simple GPS tie, and a less stringent NIC, NAC, and NUC), is NEVER going to work as FAA claims, if even it works at all (being masked, spoofed, and hacked), to help legitimately modernize ATS and ANSPs.
Thus anybody who now equips with FAA’s ADS-B overblown version is simply throwing away good money after bad. Their aircraft will still have a nearly useless overbuilt form of ADS-B, yet WILL NOT BE appropriately or adequately equipped with data link and RNP, for affordable dynamic trajectory based separation of the future. FAA’s ADS-B alone is NOT NextGen. Much more is needed than just ADS, and in a different C-N-S form, to have any meaningful installation capability for future real NextGen evolution and affordable capability (think drones, …where the entire C-N-S suite costs will need to be on the order of even FAA’s present ADS-B alone).
Accordingly, the FAA well knows that 2020 is a “myth” as any deadline, and a high fraction of US airspace user compliance is highly improbable (the emperor has no clothes). Privately, US and foreign airlines, as well as US DoD are each thumbing their nose at that faux compliance date (Note: US airlines already have been promised relief to at least 2026, and there is NO WAY DoD will ever meet 2020). Further GA’s ADS equipage curve is so dismally below FAA’s own “required installation curve” that there has been NO HOPE WHATSOEVER of GA equipping in adequate numbers to meet 2020, for a very long time now.
So except in the instance of purchasing a new aircraft, where there is no choice but to get FAA’s 91.225/227 compliant ADS-B anyway, wasting any discretionary money on retrofit installing ADS-B at this point, just to take advantage of FAA’s $500 bribe, is pure nonsense.