PAD Aviation

Avoidance of airspace over various sensitive areas (including many designated protected areas) is mandated by public law, including Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and Department of Defense (DoD) Service Branch regulations.  Until now, aviators used a variety of sources to help them identify these areas. Sectional charts, Flight Information Publications (FLIP), Notice to Airman (NOTAMS), and the Managed Areas Database (MAD) are among the resources available to aviators for pre-flight planning and in-flight avoidance.  Because of the cumbersome nature of this approach and the lack of a national standard, numerous errors have been made resulting in civil and fiscal penalties and numerous public complaints.

The purpose of the Protected Areas Database Aviation (or PAD Aviation) is to provide military and civil aviators with current, geo-referenced data that identifies areas sensitive or potentially sensitive to aircraft over-flight using a draft national standard.  PAD Aviation is a customized protected areas database derived from the PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) that streamlines the geometry for rapid response with onboard navigation equipment and contains pertinent attributes unique for aviators.  For example, easy-to-use recommended altitude or avoidance information for individual protected areas.

The database is being constructed in cooperation with the US Air Force, other military branches, defense contractors, and protected areas specialists.  The final dataset will be freely available by July 15, 2010 in numerous formats, including:

(1) For military users:

FalconView - supporting

• Portable Flight Planning Software (PFPS)
  
• Joint Mission Planning Software (JMPS)
• Execution Planner (Xplan)

(2) For civil users:

• ESRI shapefiles
  
• KML files for Google Earth/Google Map
  

The PAD-Aviation datasets and maps will also be available as part of the Data Basin system where they can be integrated with other datasets of interest.