NEXTGEN: A Dramatic Change In American Aviation
Every year American airports have more traffic passing through them than that of the previous year. Despite this consistent increase in air traffic, the air traffic technology that air traffic control centers use is around 40 years old. Even though this dated technology is working in terms of keeping the airspace safe, it is extremely inefficient and is struggling to meet the current requirements for guiding air traffic at such huge volumes.
The current technology used at air traffic control centers are based on radar technology. A radar works by emitting radio waves and showing the location of areas where these waves have been deflected. In this case, the obstructions would be airplanes. Even though that may look sufficient, the primary problem is that radar based technology can't detect airplanes that are flying outside its area of detection. Therefore, once an airplane leaves the airspace that the ATC's radar scans, they don't know the precise location of the aircraft. As a result, they have to put more space between aircraft to prevent them from colliding which reduces the capacity of the airspace and the airport.
In addition, instead of flying direct routes planes have to travel in "corridors" which are air highways through which planes travel together in different altitudes and are spaced away from each other. One of the most known air corridors is the Atlantic corridor which transatlantic flights use very frequently as shown in the image below. Using air corridors increases flight time as airlines are discouraged from traveling direct routes to their destinations. An increase in flight time leads to increased fuel consumption and more emissions which are ultimately disadvantageous to the airlines and the environment.
To resolve this inefficient system, the FAA decided to develop a new air traffic communications infrastructure called NEXTGEN. NEXTGEN is different from today's contemporary air traffic communications infrastructure because it uses satellite instead of radar and radio to communicate and detect airplanes. This new shift is said to decrease delays, help planes fly direct routes to their destinations, decrease taxiway lines. Moreover,from these general improvements the FAA predicts that NEXTGEN would produce 11.4 billion dollars in benefits to airlines and passengers in 15 years.
In addition to providing monetary benefits to passengers and airlines, NEXTGEN also revolutionizes air traffic control center technology by replacing radars with a new satellite based technology called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B). This allows air traffic controllers to monitor airplanes that are beyond the surveillance of radars such as remote areas. This would let air traffic control authorize planes to fly closer together and track them to ensure that they stay away from each other. All in all, it would lead to safer skies and would increase the capacity of the airspace because planes can fly closer together.
NEXTGEN infrastructure also benefits airlines specifically by employing a new navigation procedure called Performance Based Navigation. This new procedure uses satellite based navigation which allows for more direct routing to destinations. This allows for increased capacity for departures and arrivals at airports and also reduces flight time. Overall, Performance Based Navigation serves to decrease congestion and increase the capacity of airspace and airports while reducing fuel consumption and emissions.
NEXTGEN isn't an infrastructure plan for the far future. Several airlines such as FEDEX and Delta Airlines have tried out this new infrastructure and the benefit of this new infrastructure seems legit. FEDEX, for example, let out a statement which says that they experienced a 17% capacity gain in Memphis and a 3 minute reduction in taxi-out time. Moreover, they also saw a 2.5 minute reduction in approach time and saved 10.7 million gallons of fuel while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 100,000 metric tons. Looking at these results, there is some proof that this would possibly be the answer to the current inefficient air traffic control infrastructure that we use to fly to our destinations.
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