It's a bird! a pain! superbad! 'NEXTGEN': A CIVIL AVIATION INTERSTATE

October 19, 2008 12:16 am

WASHINGTON

--Since the early days of aviation, Americans have increasingly come to rely on air transportation in our everyday lives. We travel by air to visit our families, we send packages to loved ones, businesses send and receive goods by air, and helicopters provide emergency medical service and even give us traffic reports on our way to work in the morning.

Civil aviation is the lifeblood of the global economy. Two hundred seven billion dollars ($207 billion) of economic activity are directly produced by air carriers, air cargo, general aviation, aircraft manufacturing, and airports. One million jobs spring from the aviation industry, but that's just the beginning. The total direct and indirect contributions of aviation to the U.S. economy reach almost $700 billion.

But while our reliance on air transportation has increased exponentially, almost every day we hear about congestion, delays, and canceled flights. Air travel has become an ordeal and the reason is simple: Aviation has simply outgrown the air-traffic infrastructure established 50 years ago when jet engines and radar were new.

THE NEXT GENERATION

We need to transform, not just upgrade, the current air transportation system. To that end, the Federal Aviation Administration is working with the Department of Defense, NASA, other government agencies, and the aviation industry to develop the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen.

NextGen will transform the way America flies. It is using 21st-century technologies to move us from city to city safely, without delay, while reducing aviation's environmental impact. It is a history-making transportation project with the magnitude of the interstate highway system. The interstate changed the face of America, and NextGen will change the way we fly.

To illustrate this point, today's airplanes fly on set routes, similar to highways in the sky that are connected along the way by radar "fix points." These routes do not represent the most efficient path from point to point--in fact, they require aircraft to fly much longer routes. Our legacy ground infrastructure drives this constraint. With space-based surveillance and aircraft navigation systems, pilots will have the option of selecting and flying direct routes from city to city. Sophisticated automation systems on the ground will keep track of aircraft flight paths and ensure that any conflicts are resolved.

NextGen will also improve how we operate in bad weather. Weather accounts for 70 percent of delays today, but with NextGen technology aircraft will be able to fly the shortest routes around or between weather systems. And we're developing tools that will make it easier and safer for pilots to land when visibility is limited. NextGen technology will help air traffic controllers and pilots plan the quickest routes for airplanes to fly, taking into account weather that may be developing along the route, as well as the loca- tion of other aircraft flying in the area.

SAME INFO, SAME TIME

It also will use modern, secure information technology to make sure that air traffic controllers, airline dispatchers, air traffic managers, and pilots all have the same information at the same time. If you have ever listened to the audio channel that provides access to air traffic communications while on a flight, you've heard how much talking goes on to communicate critical flight information and can probably imagine the potential for misunderstandings and errors. Digital data communications directly to the pilot or to the aircraft's flight management system will create a safer and more efficient operating environment.

The upshot of all this is that with these sophisticated tools, the air transportation system will be able to handle more airplanes--and do it more efficiently and safely. This is crucial to handling the increasing amounts of air traffic that we can expect in the coming decades.

NextGen will also make air transportation more environmentally friendly. More direct routes mean aircraft use less fuel, which equals less pollution. With satellite technology, pilots can fly patterns into and out of airports, which will significantly decrease distance flown and aircraft noise to surrounding neighborhoods. It will also mean that airplanes will get into and out of the airport quicker, decreasing the time they spend running their engines while waiting on the tarmac to take off.

Moreover, airplanes will be able to land safely on runways that are spaced closer together. This means that not only will airports get better capacity from existing runways but will also be able to build new runways without having to expand the physical airport surface, thus preserving surrounding neighborhoods and natural habitat.

SCHEDULED ARRIVAL

We expect to have the NextGen system fully operational by 2025, but NextGen is not a big-bang program whose benefits will only show up at a particular point down the road. Parts of NextGen are being introduced now, to make the transition between today's radar-based air traffic control system to tomorrow's satellite-based system a smooth one.

The technology of NextGen is not our greatest challenge. Marshalling the support--including financial resources--necessary to build and implement NextGen is. Virtually everyone seems to agree that we need to do something to address the congestion and delay problems, but not everyone is on board when it comes to doing what is necessary to make NextGen happen.

But, as we all know, we can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. And if we think congestion and delays are bad now, as a popular song of the mid-1970s so aptly put it, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Victoria Cox is senior vice president for NextGen and Operations Planning at the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Organization.