Aviation Week Holds "NextGen Ahead" Conference
Wednesday, May 11, 2011


This week, members of the aviation industry attended Aviation Week’s “NextGen Ahead” conference in Washington, D.C.  This three-day conference covered everything from funding and infrastructure to procedures and technologies facing the future of air traffic, in an effort to successfully align NextGen initiatives with business objectives.

On Wednesday, Miami Center member Dr. Ruth Stilwell, representative to ICAO for the 		   
International Federation of Air Traffic Control Associations (IFATCA), joined other experts from IATA, IFALPA, CANSO and Airservices Australia as part of the Global Harmonization panel.

The primary purpose of this panel was to discuss the strategies and procedures involved in globally harmonizing new air traffic control technologies and procedures. Stilwell was asked what she saw as the stumbling blocks of global harmonization. One major point emphasized was that ATC modernization cannot be treated as a competition. NextGen and it European counterpart SESAR are not parallel programs, they have very different challenges and goals, but will be using much of the same technologies to address them. “If you’re going to improve system performance from a global perspective, talking about who is doing it faster, or better, or greener is not going to get us there,” she stated.

 

Global harmonization will take more than a collaboration between U.S. and Europe; we need to consider Africa, Asia and South America. Growth areas like China and India could easily leapfrog the technology being implemented in the U.S. and Europe, and we need to ensure that the investments in equipment today can operate with the next "NextGen."
 
“If we (FAA and Eurocontrol) achieve perfect harmonization, but the technology can't interact with other systems, we will have failed,” Stilwell noted. “A plane is only useful if it can take you somewhere. And in order for that to happen, it has to function in the system where it takes off, the system where it lands, and the systems in between.”

When asked what the FAA should contribute to the ICAO 12th Air Navigation Conference next year, Stilwell noted that the technologies utilized in the NextGen program are well understood, but the FAA has a tremendous amount to contribute in the utilization of collaborative processes in the design, development, impletmentation and troubleshooting of new tools. They have learned from both successful experiences, building and deploying new ATC tools in collaboration with the workforce, as well as from the difficulties when that collaboration was not in place. "Collaborative relationships have to be maintained; seeking the controllers' input at the 11th hour is like changing the oil in your car after the engine has seized."

 

In addition, NATCA's NextGen Representative Mel Davis joined fellow aviation representatives on Thursday as part of the Mixed Performance Management panel. Davis brings with him 26 years of air traffic control experience, making him the perfect candidate to bring the ATC perspective to this air transportation modernization discussion.

This particular segment focused on the ways to successfully transition from the current policies and practices to the prospective NextGen environment, while addressing the challenges of aircraft mixed equipage and the performance differences that come along with it.

Mixed performance is more than an aircraft equipage issue; it affects people, communities, procedures, airspace and more. And our mixed equipage environment will present many challenges as we move toward NextGen.

Davis noted several factors involved in mixed performance management. This includes airspace redesign, RNAV/RNP, procedure design, time-based metering, and collaborative decision making. "Each point," emphasized Davis, "provides a benefit to the system that when combined are far greater a sum than its parts."

According to Davis, mixed performance will lead to better informed decision making, but we must gain a better understanding of mixed aircrfat performance, identify the humor factors involved, and define the procedures based on NextGen capabilities in order to do so.