NextGen Benefits

The FAA continues to expand its work on demonstrations, trials and initial deployment of NextGen systems and procedures. National Airspace System (NAS) operators and users – particularly participants in the demonstrations and trials – are benefiting from them. But there is a chicken-and-egg nature to the economic and policy decisions that will have the most influence over the extent and timing of future benefits.

On the one hand, achieving NextGen’s benefits depends heavily on aircraft operators and other stakeholders investing in the avionics, ground equipment, staffing, training and procedures they will need to exploit the infrastructure that the FAA puts in place to transform the aviation system in the coming decade and beyond. On the other hand, the willingness of operators and other stakeholders to make these investments depends critically on the business case for them – analyses of how valuable these benefits will be, and a clear demonstration that the analyses will turn out to be valid.

When costs are clear but benefits are even a little bit cloudy, there is an information gap that the FAA must help fill. We try to do this in two ways. First, we conduct broad, system-level analyses, estimating how integrated NextGen benefits will develop and grow over a period of years. This work draws on modeling and simulations of how NAS operations will change and what effects the changes will have.

Second, we conduct a wide range of demonstrations and operational trials of specific NextGen systems and procedures. These demonstrations, conducted in real-world settings by operations and development personnel using prototype equipment, serve many purposes. They mitigate program risks and show us whether we are on the right track in our technical approaches. They provide valuable insight into how equipment should be designed for operability, maintainability and a sound human-automation interface. And they are instrumental in advancing our understanding of the benefits to be gained from the capabilities being demonstrated.

Information from the demonstrations also helps us refine our models of NAS operations and how these operations will change, and thus our overall estimates of NextGen benefits. Further, it provides direct measurements of the ways specific NextGen capabilities can benefit NAS stakeholders and the public, enabling stakeholders to improve their own estimates of the benefits and costs of buying equipment for NextGen, and to be more confident of their analyses.

Our latest estimates show that by 2018, NextGen air traffic management improvements will reduce total delays, in flight and on the ground, about 35 percent, depending on fuel prices and traffic, compared with what would happen if we did nothing. The delay reduction will provide $23 billion in cumulative benefits from 2010 through 2018 to aircraft operators, the traveling public and the FAA. We will save about 1.4 billion gallons of aviation fuel during this period, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 14 million tons.