Reference no: EM132252101

The Original Problem The U.S. air traffi c system has achieved an impressive safety record. Nevertheless, many of the network’s features are so antiquated that experts blame them for delays and other ineffi ciencies that cost billions of dollars each year. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (www.faa.gov) estimates that if the increasing congestion in the U.S. air transportation system is not addressed, it will cost the nation’s economy $22 billion annually in lost economic activity by 2022. Perhaps more seriously, it will also cause increasing safety issues, potentially endangering the fl ying public. The Intended Solution To resolve these problems, the FAA began to develop the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) (www.faa .gov/nextgen) in 2004. (Development and deployment continue in early 2015.) The purpose of NextGen is to transform America’s air traffi c control system from a ground-based system to a satellite-based system. NextGen uses global positioning system (GPS) technologies to shorten routes, save time and fuel, reduce traffi c delays, increase the number of planes in the air traffi c system, and permit controllers to monitor and manage aircraft with greater safety. Planes will be able to fl y closer together, take more direct routes, and avoid delays caused when planes remain in holding patterns while they wait for an open runway. To implement NextGen, the FAA will have to transform the nation’s entire air transportation system. The FAA planned for a 20-year, $40 billion project, including upgraded information systems and radar, a new communications network to replace radios, and a satellite-based surveillance system that indicates the locations of nearby planes without relying on air traffi c controllers. The goal is to manage planes more precisely and automatically, thereby enabling them to fl y closer and with greater safety. The FAA planned to deploy NextGen across the country in stages between 2012 and 2025. POM Closing Case The Federal Aviation Administration’s Next Generation Air Transportation System 407 The FAA estimated that by 2018, NextGen will reduce aviation fuel consumption by 1.4 billion gallons, reduce carbon emissions by 14 million tons, and save billions of dollars in costs. Each mile in the air costs an airline about $0.10–0.15 per seat in operating expenses such as fl ight crew and fuel. Problems with NextGen’s Implementation Uneven progress, budget overruns, and confl icts among regulators and airlines demonstrate how extremely challenging the task of modernizing the world’s most complex air traffi c management network really is. The slow pace of NextGen’s implementation has drawn harsh criticism. An April 2013 report by the Government Accountability Offi ce (GAO) found that, although the project exhibited some progress, the implementation has been hindered by bureaucracy, delays designing new navigation procedures, and fear of confl icts with airport neighbors and environmentalists. The report further stated that the FAA had failed to set realistic goals, budgets, or expectations for NextGen. The report raised concerns that NextGen’s completion could slip to 2035, and its actual costs could be three times as great as its estimated costs. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta responded that the agency had met 80 percent of its implementation goals since 2008. He asserted that the FAA will continue to develop NextGen despite government spending cuts. There were early problems with NextGen. The FAA initially designed new fl ight paths without much industry input. Airlines, which are responsible for at least $7 billion of NextGen’s total cost, have already invested in sophisticated computers and other cockpit equipment to enable pilots to fl y more precise paths. Further, various interests have collided frequently. As an example, simply reworking air routes to and from airports can take years, partly as a result of environmental assessments to address local noise concerns. Diffi culties in NextGen implementation have occurred nearly everywhere, from new landing procedures that were impossible for some planes to execute to aircraft tracking software that misidentifi ed planes. Key initiatives are experiencing delays and are at risk of cost overruns. Further, the FAA lacks “an executable plan” for bringing NextGen fully online, according to the GAO. Some airline offi cials, frustrated because they have not seen promised money-saving benefi ts, assert they want better results before they spend more money to equip planes to use NextGen, a vital step to the system’s success. Lawmakers are also frustrated. NextGen has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress. With the government facing spending cuts, however, supporters fear the program will not receive the necessary funding to become fully operational. In September 2013, a government–industry advisory committee recommended that, given the likelihood of budget cuts, the FAA should concentrate on just 11 NextGen initiatives that are ready or nearly ready to come online. The committee concluded that the rest of NextGen’s 150 initiatives can wait. Even the use of GPS-based procedures has been slowed by unforeseen problems. Developing each procedure on an airport-by-airport schedule takes several years. At large airports, new procedures are used only sporadically. During busy periods, controllers do not have time to switch back and forth between the new procedures, which most airliners can use, and older procedures that regional airliners and smaller planes still use. Consequently, all fl ights use the older procedure because all planes can fl y them. In mid-2014, an internal FAA report projected that NextGen will cost $120 billion to implement, three times more than the original estimate. Further, the FAA estimated that the system will not be fully operational until 2035. The Results So Far (Early 2015) The nations’ new information system to reduce airline delays—itself years behind schedule—is fi nally yielding results. Let’s examine a few of them: • According to the FAA, the implementation of a surface management (taxi) initiative in Boston saved more than 5,000 gallons of aviation fuel and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 50 tons during one period of heavy congestion. • A shared surface surveillance system combined with aircraft monitoring techniques reduced taxi-out time by 7,000 hours per year at New York’s JFK airport and by 5,000 hours in Memphis, Tennessee. • NextGen has also been tested in Memphis with Delta Air Lines and FedEx (www.fedex.com). • The National Air Traffi c Controllers Association conducted a demonstration at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport of a new surveillance display called the Tower Flight Data Manager system that presented surveillance, fl ight data, weather, airport confi guration, and other information critical to controllers. • Specialized Optimized Profi le Descents, also known as Initial Tailored Arrivals, are in operation at airports in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Denver. Let’s take a closer look at one specifi c example, Alaska Air Group (www.alaskaair.com), where the future has arrived. Since Spring 2013, pilots landing at its Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) hub no longer descend in steps that require frequent radio contact with air traffi c controllers. Instead, they fl y smoothly on autopilot, with their engines nearly idle. One Alaska Air pilot recently demonstrated the new technology in a fl ight simulator, threading his GPS-guided Boeing 737 through a precise path that cut almost 20 miles from the old route. Signifi cantly, this revised route included a tight turn that would have been impossible with the previous system. The new equipment enables pilots to descend smoothly and to 408 CHAPTER 13 Acquiring Information Systems and Applications guide planes through narrow bands of airspace. These procedures reduce the number of local residents who are affected by noise. The pilot needed only to monitor his plane’s computers to ensure that the plane stayed on track. Under the old system—which is still employed by planes that lack new equipment and for two arrival tracks that have not been modernized—planes approached Sea-Tac by following radio beacons. Controllers guided in pilots with multiple commands to change direction, altitude, and speed. Those steps frequently consumed extra fuel, and they increased mileage. Alaska Air—not the FAA—initiated the efforts at Sea-Tac, in 2009. The airline had already been using radar-guided approaches to remote Alaskan airports that are famous for their bad weather. The FAA initially approved the plan; they then took it over a year later. The agency eventually provided nearly $5 million to update two of Sea-Tac’s four arrival tracks with GPS guidance technologies. More than 90 percent of Alaska Airlines pilots now use the two GPS approaches. Alaska Air executives claim that satellite-guided arrivals and departures at Seattle and a handful of other airports saved the carrier $17.6 million and 200,000 gallons of fuel in a single year. In sum, Alaska Air has successfully deployed some elements of NextGen. Nevertheless, as of early 2015, the success of the entire project remained uncertain.

1. Describe the many problems that have caused problems with implementing NextGen.

2. In Technology Guide 1, you learned that hardware capabilities double roughly every 18 months (Moore’s law). What impact will increases in hardware processing power, with accompanying decreases in size, have on the NextGen system? Support your answer.

3. Recall the discussion of cloud computing in Technology Guide 3. What impact might a cloud computing solution have on the future of the NextGen system? Support your answer.