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NextGen Proponents Meet to Solve Major Weather Challenges

Air Safety Week, April 21, 2008

A Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) conference held in mid-February focused on the integration of weather into the NextGen system.

The in-development, multi-million dollar NextGen system will require integrated operations and decision-making to increase capacity and reduce delays. The two-day conference provided a top-level review of the NextGen concept of operations primarily concerning "trajectory-based" and "super density" operations, assimilating weather information into future decision- making tools and processes.

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"Weather accounts for 70 percent of flight delays and 21 percent of accidents," said Ken Leonard, Director, FAA Aviation Weather Office, at the JPDO-sponsored, government-industry NextGen Conference on Integrating Weather, Airports and Air Navigation Services.

And as much as two-thirds of weather-related delay is potentially avoidable, according to a recent aviation weather/air traffic management integration study.

The FAA's Mark Andrews, head of the NextGen JPDO Weather Working Group, said integrating weather into a NextGen National Plan will be a difficult task. He noted that there have been a variety of weather-related air traffic management projects undertaken in recent years since "weather is a large problem for the National Airspace System (NAS), something that causes a lot of havoc today. There have been a lot of efforts taken on by various agencies, research groups, academia and industry, but they were piecemeal in their approach."

The conference drew more than 200 participants from government and industry.

"In order to meet the future challenges, it is essential that all stakeholders are at the table so that we can find solutions that are both technologically feasible as well as operationally realistic," said Nick Sabatini, FAA associate administrator for aviation safety.

"While we can't assure pilots that they will always have clear flying conditions, we can, with the NextGen system, be a lot smarter in how the product detects and shares weather information. The idea is to get the right information to the right people at the right time and in the right format," he stated. "Weather is absolutely an aviation safety issue. Nature is a force to be reckoned with. Mother Nature affects on-time performance and capacity."

Sabatini does not see the primary weather challenge as a lack of technology. "Rather the challenge is how to practically integrate and implement the many proven technologies that are available today to enhance the overall system, providing a common situational awareness."

Echoing Andrews, Sabatini believes "we need a national plan for NextGen weather rather than a series of well-intentioned but disconnected efforts. We need, as a concerted effort, to clear a path forward so that we devise strategies that integrate weather forecasting technologies, air traffic control procedures, NextGen technologies, surface management and airport operations to mitigate some of the messes we've seen in recent years."

Sabatini described the future system as one based on aircraft-centric operations, where an aircraft's advanced onboard capabilities are used to enable precise four-dimensional navigation, improve surveillance, and permit aircraft to serve as information nodes in the system.

As nodes, he said, aircraft will be collectors of "secure, timely, accurate, and easily understood weather information," which will be used onboard for better decision-making. At the same time, aircraft will be disseminators of weather information that will be used in real time to develop better forecasts and to illustrate current conditions to other users.

After the plenary session, aviation weather experts split up into topic- focused work groups to discuss what the aviation and weather communities should accomplish in terms of operational and technical actions to ensure synchronized integration of weather information into operational decision-support tools.

Working groups discussed what operational and technical actions must be accomplished by the aviation and weather communities to ensure synchronized integration of weather information into operational decision support tools.

One working group explored the challenges of making network-enabled weather available to all users while a second panel looked at how NextGen could improve airport operations. Including ramp operations, deicing and runway snow removal, through proactive use of weather information.

NextGen will require enhanced tactical and strategic trajectory-based operations through the proactive use of real-time weather information. Trajectory-based operations (including ground, terminal and en route) must assimilate weather information into flight planning, rerouting and flow decision support tools, and the challenges of integrating updated weather and flight status into the cockpit.

Government Industry

NextGen Proponents Meet to Solve Major Weather Challenges

Air Safety Week, April 21, 2008

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