AIN has learned that a directive from the “highest level” within the FAA has instructed the agency’s ADS-B Program Office to spend the next five months concentrating solely on resolving the user community’s overwhelmingly negative response to the proposed ADS-B implementation plan. According to well placed sources, the program office has been instructed to deal almost exclusively with the Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), a group of industry experts that the FAA had appointed before the issuance of the notice of proposed rulemaking, to advise and make recommendations to the program office. As previously reported by AIN, FAA insiders had privately expressed concern that many of the ARC’s recommendations were being largely ignored or downplayed to ensure that the NPRM be issued before the departure of former Administrator Marion Blakey, whose legacy it was to be. Agency personnel suggest that the Fiscal Year 2007 cutoff date for the agency’s “performance based” employee incentive bonus plan might also have added to that pressure.