I haven’t written anything since June because I finally went over the top and became totally disgusted with the current state of our political affairs.  At precisely the time when reason and deliberative thought are most sorely needed, it is being intentionally undermined!  I don’t know about everyone else, but I deserve better from my government. And so does aviation!

How will this appalling new political reality impact NextGen?  Well, given the recent “serious debates” over whether or not the United States of American should pay its outstanding bills, or whether or not the government should provide education grants so our kids can afford college, or whether or not the government should subsidize winter heating oil for poor and the elderly, I’d think that the probability of funding for aviation research looks pretty low.  In this political environment how can anyone defend spending billions of tax dollars for research and development to make air travel more efficient for a relatively small and prosperous segment of the population?     

So exactly what is the defensive strategy for preserving aviation research and development? You’d think that it might be to create an army of defenders armed with solid information, rigorous analysis, and rational arguments to overwhelm the mindless political agenda.  You’d think!!  But so far the quiet has been deafening. Where is that NextGen soaring rhetoric and marketing genius when it’s needed? 

How about just some information so that our aviation army can have some ammunition before going off to do battle?  And what better information opportunity can there be but for FAA to utilize the grand stage of the 56^th ATCA Annual Conference and Exposition on October 3-5, 2011 to provide industry with the informational tools it needs to defend itself.  What we (industry) need is: (1) an updated vision of where NextGen is going beyond the current near-term focus on enhanced CNS capabilities, (2) information on the documented incremental benefits NextGen has achieved since 2003, (3) sound analytical proof that the actual “transformative” NextGen is still a viable goal, and (4) the status of the research into those genuinely transformational ATC technologies.   

Speaking for myself, there are certain things I need to know before I’d be willing to enlist in our army.  Hopefully at least one of the ATCA panel sessions will address at least one of these questions:

Question 1:   “There is no doubt that enhanced communications, navigation, and surveillance capabilities will provide operational benefits to individual users/operators in terms of enhanced planning and coordination, logistics, maintainability, reliability, etc., and even safety. However, they remain ATC enabling technologies that, alone or collectively, cannot provide systemic tactical ATC operational benefits.  An analogous transportation situation is the nearly ubiquitous presence of GPS navigation systems in almost every vehicle on the highway.  To what degree has that technology influx enhanced the efficiency of the highway system?  While my GPS unit is fantastically helpful to me, without some system wide planning and execution function that actually tells me how to change my route for the good of the whole; I’d have to answer, “Not much!  I still get caught in traffic delays”.  Similarly, NextGen is currently focused on the collection and distribution of aviation related “data” without much attention to developing any technological capability for tactical or strategic planning or control.  Please tell me I'm wrong.  I’d like someone on the panels to please address the status of research related to technological capabilities that will serve as the aviation tactical planning and execution functions.  Without these critical functions that are essential for changing the very nature of the ATC process, the claim for “transformation” seems to be inappropriate at best.  If the official response to the question is that developing such hugely difficult functions is unrealistic, impossible, or impolitic; then perhaps we have wrong people in charge of NextGen.

Question 2:   One of the ATCA panels is charged with addressing the requirement for workforce cultural changes in a NextGen environment.  Why? The six Transformational Programs and the seven solution sets are all focused on CNS enhancements and massive data collection and distribution capabilities, with nothing oriented towards applying advanced technologies to transform the actual ATC process.  The question is: “Except for expanded “collaboration”, how will the NextGen operational environment be any different from today’s environment?  Can the panel, or anyone else, describe the anticipated NextGen ATC operational environment, at a workforce role/culture level, with any certainty beyond the extremely vague speculation offered in the original NextGen concept?”

Question 3:  While FAA seems to have an abundance of resources available to simulate, analyze, and evaluate changes to the ATC system, those studies are usually focused on airspace changes, traffic routing changes, and other very pragmatic near-term approaches to enhancing system efficiency.  While that is a good thing, there is no evidence that those same resources are being applied to simulating and analyzing long-term NextGen concepts except for those that are mere extensions or variations on the current controller-centric ATC process.  I’m certainly no technologist, but I’ll bet there is any number of highly sophisticated ATC compatible technologies out there that could, in time, change (transform?) the very nature of air traffic control.  My questions are: "To what degree can the existing simulation capabilities simulate an ATC environment that is not controller-centric?" and "To what degree is FAA willing to let go of the conceptual reins and allow industry to begin to explore the operational viability of alternative tactical ATC concepts and technologies?"  Isn’t that why DARPA is a NextGen partner?

Naturally I don’t expect to have any of these broader questions addressed by any of the people on any of the panels.  But if someone doesn’t give the right answers to the right people right now, don’t be surprised if they receive an invitation to a Tea Party right soon.  If we as a nation fail to take the lead on developing and deploying an advanced ATC system and chose to simply continue to manage a routine technological evolution, then perhaps extraordinary funding for NextGen is not justified and that whole ATC transformation business can simply be left to the Europeans, or perhaps someday the Chinese.

 I attended the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) Technical Symposium during the week of May 16^th at Atlantic City. The NextGen program was allocated one session titled “Meeting NextGen Challenges” but I would love to see ATCA sponsor a technical symposium solely dedicated to discussing the NextGen concept, the technical issues, and the development status of all the program components. NextGen is that magical "transformational" program that no one seems to be able to explain and I'd like to know more about it. I want to know more than simply the number of new GPS/RNP routes and approaches that have been published or the status of ongoing profile descent demonstrations. There HAS to be more than that going on! 

 For example, a NextGen cornerstone capability for 2025, in fact the foundational capability, is Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) which is the concept whereby individual aircraft will be able to “negotiate” a 4D trajectory with the ATC system to fly their optimal routings as well as their optimal climb and descent profiles. This genuinely transformational concept creates a "free flight" traffic flow environment that, at least conceptually, provides significant operational efficiency enhancements for aircraft operators. What is the status of TBO? Now that we’re 8 years into the NextGen effort, it should be relatively well defined by now.  

At the same time, two cornerstones of terminal operations are the GPS navigation based Required Time of Arrival (RTA) and Optimal Profile Descents (OPD) concepts whereby aircraft are assigned and expected to execute extremely precise 4D arrival paths that will enable optimal metering and minimum spacing of aircraft as they cross the landing runway thresholds. In this environment controllers will somehow manage the upstream metering and merging process (although the operational details of how that will be done seem to remain undefined) to achieve the maximum capacity of the arrival runways.

While I’m not aware of any simulations or other analyses of how the TBO may work, there has been an avalanche of simulations for the RTA and OPD that show almost no scattering of aircraft tracks between the arrival fix and the runway threshold. The analytical conclusion is that the aircraft get their optimal routing and descent profile without unnecessary distance being added through inefficient vectoring, thereby saving time, fuel, emissions, and narrowing the noise footprint to only those people living directly under that optimal flight track

The symposium panel session on NextGen did have a status update on this NextGen concept, followed by a second panelist who gently raised a significant NextGen challenge that must be considered before much more effort goes into this GPS navigation application. His name was Mel Davis. He was an air traffic controller at Los Angeles tower for ten years and then a radar controller at the Southern California TRACON for another ten years. He is now the National NextGen Representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

Mr. Davis’s comments were specifically addressing time-based (i.e., metering) vs. distance-based (vectoring) traffic management and separation assurance. His point was that humans think spatially while computers think temporally and that managing traffic based upon time is not consistent with natural human mental processing. Mr. Davis is correct, which means that while time based metering may be an easier technical aproach and programming task for developers of automation systems, forcing controllers to make the mental conversion from time to distance in order to comply with metering time requirements significantly adds to controller mental workload .

Mr. Davis also showed a slide with two pictures on it. On the right side of the slide was a graphic showing the disciplined and orderly flow of the simulated aircraft tracks of multiple aircraft flying precise arrival paths while complying with assigned runway threshold crossing times. On the left side was a graphic showing the undisciplined and disorderly flow of actual aircraft tracks of multiple aircraft being vectored to intercept the final approach course. Common wisdom within the NextGen technical community is that the precise tracking is, by definition, more efficient and a significant enhancement to terminal operations.

Mr. Davis went on to make the comment that there was a “beauty” in the graphic on the LEFT (the one with the vectored aircraft). There was a repressed chuckle in the audience, with most folks assuming he had misspoken. Mr. Davis then continued, explaining that the vectoring allowed controllers to factor in the variable characteristics of the individual aircraft types and their crews and that vectoring is really the best way to maintain pressure on the runway, with separation (and therefore capacity) being limited largely by the landing aircraft’s runway occupancy time. It may have been my own cynical view but I would swear that almost everyone in the audience was stunned and wanted to shout out: “He’s not an electronics engineer, he’s not a computer scientist or a technical analyst, he’s not even a pilot; he’s just an air traffic controller, and a UNION REP at that – what could he possibly know about the SCIENCE of air traffic control”

However, Mr. Davis is absolutely correct! Not every aircraft is a B737-800. Every aircraft type has its own operating characteristics. B-747s are handled differently than regional jets, which are handled differently than turboprops, which are handled differently than twin-engine props, which are handled differently than single engine props. And an IFR Cessna 172 can block a final approach course for what feels like hours. To require an aircraft to operate at a faster or slower speed than its inherent optimal simply to maintain a precise arrival path to achieve the optiomal system metering requirement obviously forces the aircraft to operate sub-optimally. 

Vectoring allows fast aircraft to SAFELY pass slower aircraft; vectoring enables delaying vectors to re-sequence the set of arrival aircraft into a more efficient landing order and allows controllers to squeeze more aircraft closer together to keep maximum pressure on the runway. Vectoring also allows controllers to accommodate VFR arrivals requesting sequencing service or a practice IFR approach, it accommodates tower enroute arrivals, and it accommodates that occasional missed approach or go-around. Can a metering program perform ANY of those capabilities? The NextGen arrival concept that many people seem to believe is almost ready for deployment isn’t even CLOSE to being operationally useful, let alone acceptable. To think otherwise and to think that simply assigning aircraft arrival metering and runway threshold crossing times while, at the same time, expecting terminal controllers to ensure both separation AND compliance with a precise trajectory is just . . . well, let’s say naïve.

Therefore, a key NextGen challenge to “meet” might be to figure out how to develop the NextGen technology such that it is at least operationally compatible with the way the human users of that technology function. It would be even better if the technology addressed the full scope of the controllers’ job and not just a single component part. It would be still better if the technology intended to enhance aircraft operator benefits also made the controllers’ job easier rather than harder. Simply changing the ATC handbook is not an effective approach to dealing with the human factors issues. It makes no sense to develop technology that increases operational risk and/or workload for controllers, which then forces them to passively or aggressively resist the threat to their own well-being, and then complain that the controllers are anti-technology. No, they’re just anti—poorly designed technology!

I attended the Air Traffic Control Association Symposium in Atlantic City the week of May 16th. FAA Deputy Administrator, Michael Huerta, was the keynote speaker for the first day. In answering a question about the search for a new Chief Operating Officer (COO) [Gawd, I HATE that phony "business" terminology] he offhandedly mentioned that the NextGen effort will soon be reorganized out of the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) as a stand-alone organization in order to streamline development and deployment of NextGen technologies. Wow!! 

Currently the NextGen program is organizationally co-resident in the ATO with, among many other elements, the remnants of what was at one time the strong and independent Air Traffic Service I talked about in the "Domestication of Wolves" post.  Becoming a component of that deployment oriented organization changed the role of air traffic personnel away from placing rigorous operational requirements on new technologies to facilitating their deployment. More than likely this new organizational structure will completely separate the air traffic experts from the technology development and deployment effort and be the final emasculation of the old Air Traffic Service.  Now it will be easier than ever for NextGen to avoid facing and dealing with any real world considerations and high operational expectations that might negatively impact deployment  

There was a ray of hope though.  The keynote speaker for the second day was Rick Ducharme, Senior VP of Operations (Ugh!!), and acting ATO COO.  I’d never heard Rick speak before but what I saw and heard was the embodiment of the “old school” air traffic “type”!  What a breath of fresh air and brutal candor.  For a moment I actually had visions that the separation of NextGen might be a GOOD thing!  If Rich Ducharme were to become the permanent COO, you might see a re-emergence of a strong and independent air traffic role.  I could see him demanding that new technologies meet or exceed the operational standards set by the users of the technology BEFORE it ever reaches a field ATC facility!  FAA might even get back to its core mission of providing a full range of aviation services to the public.

Of course that vision is probably more akin to a hallucination.  It ain’t gonna happen.  The new COO will probably be a blue ribbon executive and team player, probably from the technology industry, and more than likely a pilot (since pilots know all there is to know about ATC).  He’ll be convinced of the vital importance of NextGen and will make sure that the new ATO doesn’t bring up anything that will impede NextGen deployment.  There’s far too much at $take!!