Ensuring a Vibrant Aviation System for the Future

August 7, 2014 - Anyone familiar with the U.S. airline industry knows that the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, faces its share of potential challenges. As the nation attempts to transition to this new operational approach, participants in a panel discussion titled “Modernizing Our National Airspace System: the Flight Path, the Pot Holes, and the Promise” considered what it will take to keep efforts to modernize the airspace system on pace with technology and the rest of the world.

ALPA First Vice President and National Safety Coordinator Sean Cassidy described NextGen as “the application of policy, procedures, and equipage, which drives up the efficiency of our transportation system and does so while maintaining or advancing aggregate levels of safety and security.” Cassidy, who served as moderator, challenged the panelists to offer their insights and recommendations.

Marla Westervelt from the Eno Center for Transportation noted that the obstacles to NextGen implementation include inconsistent federal funding and too much government intervention. She posed three solutions, borrowing from the experiences of our international peers: maintaining the status quo, converting our aviation infrastructure into a government corporation, or completely privatizing it.

One of our greatest challenges with current funding is the technological lag, according to Robert Poole, director of Transportation Policy for the Reason Foundation. By the time government approves a system upgrade, it’s no longer state of the art. In the current environment, the focus of funding has become a debate of pleasing congress versus providing the customer with what they want. He pointed out that if the money is depoliticized, revenue bonds could be issued to finance future capitalization. With the current funding system, cash flow for projects cannot be confirmed beyond the annual fiscal cycle.

“It’s in the American DNA never to be satisfied with where we are,” said Edward Bolen, president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association. He noted that for as much as everyone complains about NextGen funding, the FAA budget has been flat or has increased each year during the last 15 years. Bolen said that we shouldn’t just “junk what we have.” Bonding authority would mean borrowing, and it’s difficult to secure a loan when you don’t know exactly what you’re buying. Bolen stressed that borrowing our way out of the problem and paying for it later is not a viable solution.

Melvin Davis, the national NextGen representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, pointed out that the core legacy infrastructure works and is efficient. As we look at the trajectory of air traffic modernization, the potential potholes, and the final product, Davis said that we should do the things we know we can do now. Stable funding remains a challenge for NextGen realization, but, at the same time, we have to recognize that the NAS is a very diverse system. Davis feels that we should make accommodations to the current infrastructure but not change the system dramatically, for fear that we might jeopardize what we have already accomplished.