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!!