NextGen Q and A
The NextGen transformation is an evolving journey. As the FAA forms new partnerships and launches new initiatives, it’s more important than ever to keep our stakeholders informed. This area of the Website is devoted to providing answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding NextGen, as well as to providing a forum for information exchange. The questions found on this page have been culled from recent NextGen Town Hall meetings, as well as from queries submitted via email. If you have a question about NextGen that you would like answered, please send it to nextgen@faa.gov. Please include your name, title, employer, and city/state of employment. Due to the sheer volume of email, we cannot guarantee an answer to every question, nor can we provide answers via email.
- What is FAA’s NextGen Implementation Plan?
- FAA’s NextGen Implementation Plan defines this agency’s path to NextGen. The NextGen Implementation Plan contains firm, fully-funded commitments to new operational capabilities, new airport infrastructure, and improvements to safety, security, and environmental performance. The plan’s management process ensures these will be delivered by a specific near-term dates. The FAA and its partners are also undertaking research, policy and requirements development, and other activities, to assess the feasibility and benefits of additional proposed system changes that could be delivered in the mid-term (2012-2018). The goal of this plan is to turn these proposals into commitments, and to guide them into use. The plan’s 2009 installment focuses on equipage in the mid-term, as well as the associated benefits.
- What is NextGen?
- NextGen is a wide ranging transformation of the entire national air transportation system — not just certain pieces of it — to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky and at the airports. It moves away from ground-based surveillance and navigation to new and more dynamic satellite-based systems and procedures, and introduces new technological innovations in areas such as weather forecast, digital communications and networking. When fully implemented, NextGen will safely allow more aircraft to fly more closely together on more direct routes, reducing delays, and providing unprecedented benefits for the environment and the economy through reductions in carbon emissions, fuel consumption, and noise.
- What will happen if NextGen is not implemented?
- Without NextGen there will be gridlock in the skies. By 2022, FAA estimates that this failure would cost the U.S. economy $22 billion annually in lost economic activity. That number grows to more than $40 billion by 2033 if the air transportation system is not transformed. Even as early as 2015 FAA simulation shows that without some of the initial elements of NextGen aviation delays will be far greater than those today.
- Who developed the NextGen Implementation Plan?
- The NextGen Implementation Plan is an FAA-wide document, overseen by our Senior Vice President for NextGen and Operations Planning. Its content is validated by the NextGen Review Board and approved by the NextGen Management Board, which is chaired by FAA’s Deputy Administrator.
- Is FANS going to be part of NextGen? Or will the FAA NextGen Data Communications Program be handled by a more modern system?
- Currently, FAA plans call for operational accommodation for FANS 1/A+ equipped aircraft that employ the VDL-2 air/ground link. FANS over VDL-2 offers an excellent set of capabilities, and is expected to meet our safety and performance requirements. Airspace users who employ FANS for ATC data communications are expected to benefit from the wide range of communications services, which the Data Communications and NextGen Programs will offer. FANS equipped operators will benefit from data communications handoffs/frequency changes, route clearances, and the rest of the CPDLC functions that improve productivity, airspace capacity, safety and reduce ATC-related delays. FANS will also support many of the advanced NextGen services, such as trajectory based operations, which can exploit the FMS integration FANS offers.
FANS accommodation will enable a potentially significant number of aircraft to participate in data communications with relatively little additional investment. For those aircraft coming off the factory floor, or without existing capabilities, the Data Communications Program is looking toward avionics that will comply with newly developed RTCA SC-214/WG-78 standards, which will offer the most complete set of data communications services.
- With the U.S. economy in recession at the moment, where do operators stand on investing in equipage?
- Answer: (Provided by Dr. Michael Romanowski, Director of the Office of NextGen Integration and Implementation)
- How will NextGen impact airports, and what changes will be required? What is the FAA doing to help airports prepare for NextGen?
- Answer:Provided by Kate Lang, Associate Administrator for Airports
- Is training a priority of the NextGen planning effort?
- Answer: (provided by Dr. Michael Romanowski, Director of the Office of NextGen Integration and Implementation)
Training is an integral part of what we’re doing. Any deployment that we do has to be accompanied by training.
We need to be working closely with the entire operational community, whether it’s the airlines, our controllers, or, frankly, other folks who are doing maintenance for us. The ability to provide training in the new procedures and systems has to be a major point of emphasis as we move forward, and that gets into the partnership aspect of NextGen. One of the major contributions made by the operators with whom we partner is that they’re training their crews in the new procedures.
Internally, one of the things [ATO Chief Operating Officer] Hank Krakowski has done has been to implement a new training organization as part of the ATO reorganization. The emphasis of that organization is on accelerated training, as well as on improving our ability to train our workforce. NextGen capabilities will certainly be a part of that.
![Answer: Aviation has a tremendous impact on the economy. Despite the challenges that are being faced [under the current economic conditions], by equipping for NextGen, operators, by and large, are going to be able to save money, even if they have to make an initial investment for the NextGen capabilities. That’s part of the reason we want to move forward [in the areas ofequipage and benefits] with the [RTCA NextGen Implementation] Task Force, sharing the business case aspects and the benefits of NextGen, to enable each of the operators to see that for themselves.
The operational incentives included in the integrated equipage strategy and the governing principles [outlined in the 2009 NextGen Implementation Plan] are going to be very important to gaining consensus. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got those things in place, and that the right benefits accrue to those who do take the steps to equip.](images/MRomanoski Picture and Write Up.png)