Officials Discuss NextGen Equipage

The avionics equipage requirements and cost of the next-generation air transportation system are of great concern to airlines and airframers, according to a high-level panel convened for RTCA’s “Bridge To NextGen” symposium. “From a carrier perspective, equipage is one of the singlemost critical issues,” said James C. May, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association, representing airlines. The estimated cost of equipage to carriers, he said, may be $20 billion or more over the next two decades. “The challenge is, what equipment do we order for those out-years. It’s a hell of a gamble,” May added. Kevin Brown, vice president and general manager of Boeing Air Traffic Management, offered the airframer’s perspective. The “NextGen” initiative here, and the “Single European Sky” effort in Europe will fail, Brown said, without the development of common equipage standards. “We cannot stand regionally designed flight decks on our aircraft that fly the world,” he said. Brown said new aircraft will benefit from forward-fit modular avionics. “The bad news—retrofit,” he added, explaining that some 16,000 legacy aircraft with “point-wired, federated architectures” will be difficult to upgrade. Once solution might be to use supplemental, new technologies like electronic flight bags to display air traffic information, he suggested. Charles Leader, director of the multi-agency Joint Planning and Development Office planning the transition to NextGen, said he is “not aware of anyone who wants to have multiple sets of equipage and that is not the outcome we are looking for.” However, Leader said government’s role is to set functional requirements for NextGen; industry’s role is to determine how those requirements will be achieved.