Operational Evolution Partnership
NextGen is the future of U.S. aviation. The concept 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 our airports.
State-of-the-art technology, new procedures, and new airport infrastructure will allow the FAA to safely handle dramatic increases in the number and type of aircraft using our skies, without being overwhelmed by congestion.
The goals for NextGen focus on significantly increasing the safety, security, and capacity of air transportation operations, thereby improving the overall economic well-being of the country. These benefits are achieved through a combination of new procedures, technologies and airfield infrastructure deployed to manage passenger, air cargo, general aviation, and air traffic operations.
The overall philosophy driving the delivery of NextGen air traffic management (ATM) services revolves around flexibility and distributed decision-making. NextGen must accommodate flight operator preferences to the maximum extent possible and to impose restrictions only when a real operational need exists, to meet capacity, safety, security, or environmental constraints. In other words, the ATM system adjusts airspace and other assets to satisfy forecast demand, rather than constraining demand to match available assets. The inherent limitations of today's system - including human cognitive processes and verbal communications - make the transformation to NextGen ATM necessary. Key attributes include performance-based operations, net-centric services, and shared situational awareness.
Performance-Based Operations
Advances in aircraft capabilities and air traffic system operations will allow for reduced separation and support the transition from rules-based operations to performance-based operations. Controller workload in the NextGen system will no longer be a limiting factor because of new tools and automation, which will provide expanded information and improved decision-making capabilities. In addition, the transition of separation responsibility from the controller to the flight crew in some areas will allow controllers to focus on overall flow management instead of individual flight management. Increased levels of service and dynamic resource management will enable us to meet growing demand rather than constrain demand based on available resources.
Net-Centric Services
At the heart of the NextGen concept is an information-sharing component known as net-centric infrastructure services. Its features will allow the NAS to adapt to growth in operations as well as shifts in demand, making NextGen a scalable system. Net-centric services also will provide the foundation for robust, efficient, secure, and timely transport of information to a broad community of users and individual subscribers. This will result in a system that minimizes duplication, achieves integration, and facilitates the concepts of distributed decision-making by ensuring that all decision elements have exactly the same information upon which to base a decision, independent of when or where the decision is made. The net-centricity component will bind NextGen operational and enterprise services together, thereby creating a cohesive system. Enterprise services will provide users with a common picture of operational information necessary to perform required functions. This suite of enterprise services will support shared situational awareness, and improvements in security, environment, and safety.
Shared Situational Awareness
Shared situational awareness (SSA) services will offer a suite of tools and information designed to provide NextGen participants with real-time aeronautical and geospatial information that is communicated and interpreted between machines without the need for human intervention. Weather systems will improve safety by providing timely alerts. Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services reduce dependence on costly ground-based navigation aids (NAVAID) by providing aircraft users with current location, which allows on-board avionics to make flight path adjustments and any corrections, such as course, orientation, and speed, that are necessary to achieve the desired destination. Real-time air situational awareness will be provided by integrating cooperative and non-cooperative surveillance data from all airborne vehicles.
How Will NextGen Benefit the American Public?
NextGen will maintain the availability of air travel to the average aviation customer. Analysis shows that the growth in demand for air travel by passengers, as reflected in growth of flights, is not sustainable without transforming the system. Without NextGen the supply of passenger seats will be constrained by the lack of flight capacity resulting in shortages and high cost to the average consumer. The first goal, then, is to transform the air transportation system and provide additional capacity to meet the growth in passenger demand.
Secondly, when completely implemented by all member agencies, NextGen will improve the passenger experience from curb-to-curb. NextGen has goals for airports and security to reduce the time passengers face in making their way to their gate. Once in the aircraft, NextGen will assure that the flight can be operated with minimal delay even when there are weather constraints, by improving strategic planning and more flexibly managing the airspace. In the NextGen vision, the airspace system adjusts to constraints rather than limiting the demand and imposing delays to accommodate the constraints. Flights, from curb-to-curb, will be more reliable and travel time will be minimized.
Thirdly, NextGen improves aviation's environmental performance. New capabilities, advancements in technology and operations, and the development of quieter, cleaner aircraft will allow U.S. aviation to operate more efficiently with less energy, fewer emissions, and less noise.