Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen)
The future of U.S. aviation is the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen. In the 21st century, the growing global demand for aviation, development of new and exciting airborne vehicles, and security and environmental concerns, are going to require a new kind of aviation system.
That’s why there is a concerted effort by the United States to design, plan and build 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 airports. State-of-the-art technology, new procedures, and new airport infrastructure will allow the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to safely handle dramatic increases in the number and type of aircraft, without being overwhelmed by congestion. NextGen is a curb-to-curb transformation of the U.S. air transportation system. This transformation involves going from today’s ground-based, human-dependent communications, navigation, and surveillance system to one that takes advantage of satellite navigation and surveillance, digital communications and advanced networking. It shifts some decision-making from the ground to the cockpit.
NextGen is consistent with the FAA’s mission to maintain the safest, most efficient national airspace system possible. The FAA does this by enforcing aviation safety regulations, and certifying 320,000 aircraft and over 700,000 pilots. The FAA provides air traffic control services, handling about 55,000 flights per day, and serving over 700 million passengers a year. NextGen Through Multi-Agency Involvement As part of the NextGen effort, the FAA is working closely with several government agencies that make up the Joint Planning and Development Office. JPDO includes the U.S. departments of Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce; the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NextGen cannot be realized by government efforts alone. More than 200 industry members are involved at every stage of NextGen’s development through the NextGen Institute. This is an unprecedented government-industry partnership on such a large-scale initiative.
Key NextGen Programs:
- System Wide Information Management (SWIM) (PDF)
- Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) (PDF)
- NextGen Data Communications (PDF)
- NAS Voice Switch (PDF)
- Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) (PDF)
- Network Enabled Weather (NNEW) (PDF)
NextGen Transformation:
From...
- Ground-Based Navigation and Surveillance
- Voice Radio Control
- Disconnected Information Systems
- Air Traffic “Control”
- Fragmented Weather Forecasting
- Visibility Limited Airfield Parameters
- Forensic Safety System
To...
- Satellite-Based Navigation and Surveillance
- Digital Data Exchange
- Net-Centric Information Access
- Air Traffic “Management”
- Informed Decisions Using Integrated Weather
- “Equivalent Visual” Operations
- Prognostic Safety System
More Information
- NextGen: Implementing Tomorrow’s Solutions TODAY. (PDF)
Read more about this topic: Air Traffic Organization
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