Just curious, why do you say that ASDE-X is a failure? I am not necessarily doubting you. I had just always thought it was working well.

Here is a little story from the other day. I still have no idea what happened, so maybe one of you guys can explain it to me.

I work in Airport Operations for an airport in the North East. I received a phone call from a guy who said he was an approach controller down in NC. He sounded extremely frustrated and out of breath. He started asking me about a specific aircraft and its route of flight (He was trying to locate this a/c, I assume because it never made it down to NC?)

"This guy was filed here, then here, and over this fix, and I think there must have been a mistake in his flight plan..."

I stop him and explain that I am airport operations, I don't know anything about this guys flight plan, or the fixes he is talking about. I tell him I can give him the tower cab number, and he can ask them. He says no, he just wants to find out if the aircraft is at my airport. I say there is no way for me to know for sure if it is here, but I look up the flight plan on Flightaware.com, and sure enough, it shows the whole flight from one North East airport to another.

So for the life of me I cannot understand why an approach controller from NC is calling me asking about an aircraft who's flight plan was entirely within New York State.

Well he is still not satisfied, and is sounding mightily exhausted. He finally agrees to take the tower cab number from me.

10 minuets later I call the tower cab, and they tell me it was Flight Service calling. Turns out the guy lied to me when he said he was an approach controller from NC.

Still the whole thing was very confusing.