departure from the current policy of
“first come, first served” and would be as
much a political issue as an operational
one.
FAA has committed to maintaining
a dialogue on this topic but also recognizes that the best means to encourage
equipage is to provide PBN capabilities
in greater numbers and with shorter lead
times from inception to completion.
The introduction of PBN procedures,
especially Required Navigation Performance (RNP), has been slow to evolve.
This may be due in part to the increased
volume of work and the lack of FAA
inspectors in the field with good working
knowledge of PBN.
The Flight Standards and Aircraft
Certification Services offices of FAA’s
Aviation Safety organization have begun
to respond to these concerns by increasing both the number of inspectors and
their level of knowledge of PBN procedures. The action plan to address this
recommendation calls for a Lean Process review and a review of the current
National Environmental Policy Act to
FAA responded to the NextGen Task
Force with this document in January,
accepting 33 recommendations and listing actions items for achieving each.
identify changes, streamline, and improve
the processes and procedures that will
better enable the implementation and
improve the coordination of PBN products. The agency’s goal is to complete the
reviews and begin the implementation of
process changes this year.
In addressing industry concerns about
surface movement, FAA has committed
to providing Airport Surface Detection
Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) to 34 of
the 35 designated Operational Evolution
Partnership (OEP) airports and a few
other select airports. The agency is considering funding infrastructure for surface
surveillance in airport non-movement
areas and integrating some of the surface
monitoring function with additional decision support tools by 2018.
A key commitment made by the FAA
is to work with industry to develop an
improved means of data sharing and distribution, not only for the surface applications but for several other applications,
including collaborative decision making
tools and procedures that are considered
a critical element of any future Next
Generation Air Transportation System
(NextGen) environment.
One of the areas where industry sees
a large operational benefit is in
greater utilization of
closely spaced
parallel and
converging
runways. Cur-
rently, utiliza-
tion of proce-
dures for these
types of runways
is limited as is the
mixing of instru-
ment landing sys-
tem (ILS) and RNP
approach procedures.
Industry believes that
changes in policies and
procedures related to
such runways can offer
substantial increases in
capacity at several high-
density airports. FAA
concurred with this industry
recommendation and will
begin to approve operations
at additional runway ends
where the procedures already
exist as well as including up to
five more airports.
FAA also committed to
review the current blunder assump-
tions used in approving closely spaced
parallel runway operations to determine
the operational impact of these changes.
This will occur over the next two years
and changes will be implemented in FAA
Order 7110.65, Air Traffic Controllers
Manual. FAA also will consider using
Precision Runway Monitoring-Alterna-tive (PRM-A), an approved multilateration system that provides precise aircraft
position information that is essential to
providing the necessary safety monitoring of aircraft performing closely spaced
parallel approaches.
The agency’s action plan will further
commit to evaluating two support tools:
the Converging Runway Display Aid
(CRDA) and Relative Position Indicator
(RPI) at selected airports, and use the
data collected to support greater field
implementation of RPI in 2012.
Viewed as the replacement for ILS,
satellite-based precision instrument
approaches (GNSS Landing System;
Localizer Performance with Vertical
guidance) can provide backup to existing ILS systems for the near term and
replace them in the mid- to far-term
periods. Having this technology available
as a backup for ILS allows an airport
to maintain capacity levels in the event
of an ILS outage. FAA agreed with this
recommendation, and this year will conduct simulations and safety analyses of
using combinations of satellite-based and
ILS instrument approach systems. It will
update Order 7110.65 to authorize the
use of satellite-based technology during
simultaneous independent and dependent
approaches to closely spaced parallel
runways.
The term “Metroplex” describes an
area where there are several airports, and
in some cases major airports, located in a
small geographic area. A good example is
the New York Metroplex. This represents
a challenging environment to provide
increased capacity while maintaining
safety. Industry believes the use of Area
Navigation (RNAV), RNP and the radi-us-to-a-fix leg type offer the best means
by which to de-conflict traffic while maintaining or increasing capacity.
The Task Force recommended that
implementation of RNAV and RNP
procedures be increased in both enroute
and terminal environments and used to
help de-conflict terminal airspaces as well
as to improve enroute traffic flow. The
Task Force also recommended that joint
FAA/industry teams be created at each
potential site to oversee the development
of procedures to ensure they meet the
