FAA Moves Beyond Task Force to Implementation

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is poised to move forward with recommendations on implementing capabilities and technologies to make the National Airspace System (NAS) more efficient, according to an Avionics Magazine Webinar Wednesday.

Mike Romanowski, FAA director of NextGen Integration and Implementation, said during the Webinar that the FAA is setting up an infrastructure within the aviation agency and throughout the aviation industry to continue the work of the RTCA NextGen Mid-Term Implementation Task Force, which delivered a series of recommendations this past September.

Romanowski said the FAA has established a NextGen Implementation Working Group, which will consist of the RTCA task force leadership. FAA officials plan to meet with the Working Group in the “very near future,” according to Romanowski.

“We asked that this [group] be established as a transitional vehicle to really ensure we understand all the subtleties and details of the recommendations,” Romanowski said.

In addition, Romanowski said FAA is issuing its own NextGen Implementation Report in January that will bring together the internal FAA plenary work with the RTCA task force recommendations. “We’re assessing those recommendations against our current thinking, identifying where the gaps are, where some adjustments need to be made in the planning and what adjustments need to be made from a budgetary point of view and resource allocation point of view,” Romanowski said.

The RTCA Task Force began its work earlier this year, at the request of FAA, to bring stakeholders of the industry together to outline key objectives to implement NextGen capabilities to gain operating efficiencies by 2018.

Ray Glennon, RTCA vice president, said during the Webinar that the task force focused on capabilities rather than individual technologies in an effort to focus on the operational benefits gained. A key differentiator of the task force was the inclusion of the financial executives from the operators, with the aim of putting these technologies in place, according to Glennon.

“One of the things we learned early on is there are a lot of things competing for an operator’s money,” he said.

In September, the task force issued a list of suggested operational capabilities in five identified "domains" of surface operations, runway access, metroplex operations, cruise and NAS access. It has identified two capability areas that are cross cutting all domains: integrated air-traffic management and data communications. Finally, it has asked FAA to consider "over-arching" recommendations deemed critical to successful implementation of NextGen capabilities, including financial incentives for equipage such as low-interest loans, subsidies and other mechanisms.

To listen to an archived version of the Webinar, go to:  www.aviationtoday.com/webinars/2009-1104.html