The Air Transport Association (ATA) rejected assertions by House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee members that the industry has not made its case for the massive funding necessary for NextGen. Related Story

“I don’t think anyone has worked harder to get NextGen,” ATA President James May, told the FAA Forecast Conference last week. “It may be accurate to say that we may not have had specific programs identified for the stimulus bill and we may not have been as early in the game as we should have been, but I think it also had to do with the uncertainty surrounding who was to head the FAA and how the system will be implemented.”

While May related his answer to the stimulus package, the issue goes far deeper as evidenced by the two-year failure to achieve FAA reauthorization legislation. Indeed, other panelists seemed to agree with Committee Chair James Oberstar and Aviation Subcommittee Chair Jerry Costello who expressed deep frustration at both the Federal Aviation Administration and the industry for their failure to communicate. Indeed, several noted that airports were consistently able to get their point across not only to the transportation committees on both sides of Congress, but on up the line to appropriators.

Indeed, that is exactly what Oberstar, Costello and others are complaining about – the industry fails time and again to give them the ammunition needed so they can make their case to appropriators. The difference between what airports have been able to accomplish – increased spending for AIP as well as billions in the stimulus bill – was so stark that one questioner turned to Moderator Chip Barclay and asked just how it was his organization – the American Association of Airport Executives – which organized last week’s event, did it. His answer? Going beyond the Congressional aviation community.

But, to be fair, pouring concrete and increasing airport capacity is a far easier concept to grasp, and fund, than the misty entity that is now NextGen, something that refuses to take form because so much remains undefined and unorganized at FAA. Indeed, Congress has seen it morph numerous times over the past decades yet never seen it fielded.

But, the failure has as much to do with the chaos within the FAA itself, as it has to do with industry’s inability to gain more traction on Capitol Hill. Indeed, what played out at recent reauthorization hearings on both sides of Congress was a clear lack of faith that FAA can deliver on NextGen. So, in that respect, May is right. The lack of leadership at the agency has certainly hurt, but Congress is also questioning the inner workings of the FAA to achieve NextGen and, after more than two decades of “modernization,” can it be wrong? Related Story

But the leadership problem goes beyond the FAA, according to Fred Pease, executive director, Department of Defense Policy Board on Federal Aviation, who, speaking at last week’s conference, said the leadership needs to be at a top inter-agency level. He noted that numerous agencies besides the departments of defense and transportation will benefit from NextGen. “We have to get those agencies to view NextGen as theirs.”

His comments take on new urgency now that ATA has called for a national policy that would give aviation infrastructure the urgency highways had during the Eisenhower Administration. “You need to treat aviation infrastructure the same way Eisenhower treated the highway system,” said May, reiterating a call he made during recent reauthorization hearings. “Inefficiency cost the economy $40 billion per year and aviation contributes $1.3 trillion to the economy.”

Pease illustrated the difficulty in moving NextGen beyond efficiency, cost savings and U.S. competitiveness issues to its strategic value. He tried to interest Congress in this angle but he gained little from his expedition to the Hill. “They were not ready to hear it,” he said.

This industry must remember, however, that is was not the post-war boom and the proliferation of the automobile that catapulted the highway system into reality. It was Eisenhower’s experience in a post-World War I, cross country, military convoy driving on largely dirt and muddy roads that raised the national defense and strategic value of such a project. In addition, it too benefited from the fact that pouring concrete is easier to grasp than amorphous technology that has yet to be defined.

So it is no surprise that panelists also called for what ATA is describing as NowGen, using the technology available today to field proven procedures such as RNAV and RNP to gain much-needed capacity and efficiency improvements. May, pushing the industry’s NowGen concept, said much can be done in three to five years at the largest airports as well as the airspace redesign that goes beyond the political football resulting from noise patterns changing.

One of the stumbling blocks is waiting for the FAA to make its case on aircraft equipage so ensure, as United Airlines Senior Vice President Kevin Knight said, that airliners are not retired with avionics on board that were never able to be used take advantage of whatever NextGen promises. This is a common theme in the industry which has clearly done its bit to pull NextGen out of the FAA.

“NextGen will take billions of dollars in investments, some of which is in the cockpit,” said May. “We need to know the business case to be made. We need to know RNAV and RNP procedures are being engineered and ADS-B in and out can be used.”

Users now want a system in which early adopters who equip their aircraft for RNAV and RNP be given priority which would at least ensure their heavy investment does not go to waste as it has in the past.

Still, Congressional reticence, however frustrating, seems understandable in the face of all that needs to be done by both industry and government to define and field NextGen.

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