Mapping Application Benefit to GA User Groups

In the Increasing Benefit for GA post, 42 ADS-B applications were identified. Understanding which of those applications are most beneficial for GA will inform what applications that should be implemented first -- resulting in benefit from ADS-B being delivered sooner. A list like that could be used by the FAA to identify what procedures have to be developed, what flight test need to be conducted, etc.

There is a complication that arises when trying to do this: General Aviation is very diverse - it ranges from the occasional recreational pilot to the commercial pilot flying jets for a company. As such, the type of operation these two pilots conduct are substantially different and therefore the applications they would prefer would also differ. At the same time, there are probably more recreational pilots than there are jet pilots in GA and so they would carry more weight.

Therefore, to get a selection of applications that represents General Aviation as a whole, the following process was used:

1. Identify the major subgroups within General Aviation
Four user groups were identified within GA: Recreational Flying, Business Flying, Flight Training and Aerial Application/Other which contained Agricultural operation, EMS, etc. These categories are based on the FAA's 2007 General Aviation Survey.

2. Assign Weighting Factor to Each Subgroup
This evaluation was also based on the FAA's GA survey. Of all the hours flown in 2007, they were distributed as follows:

Recreational Flying: 37.10%
Business Flying: 26.48%
Flight Training: 15.97%
Aerial App./Other: 20.45%

3. Evaluate Benefit of a Given Application to Each Subgroup
This was the most difficult part. Using the literature mentioned in the previous post, an overall benefit assessment was conducted and each application ranked for each subgroup. The scale used was 1 for low benefit, 2 for medium benefit and 3 for high benefit.

4. Create a Weighted Average Benefit Value
Multiplying the weighing factor with the benefit for each of the subgroups gives an overall Benefit ranking for each application

I know this is somewhat confusing -- so here is an example:


Once each application was evaluated, a list of the applications with the highest scores could be created.