Economy Advantage-General Internals

Economy Advantage-General Internals

The generation of delays and their propagation throughout the system has negative impacts on passenger’s quality of travel and more broadly the economy. Because the air transportation system is a vital underlying infrastructure of a country’s economy, there is the need to find ways by which the system remains reliable, safe and efficient while meeting future demand. This motivates the need to investigate the mechanisms by which the air transportation system scaled to meet demand in the past and will do so in the future. In addition, understanding the implications of the evolution of the system is fundamental for guiding and informing policy decisions for the Next Generation of Air Transportation System in the United States and similar modernization and development efforts in other parts of the world.

The aviation industry is critical to the nation’s economic health and safety, accounting for over $1 trillion in economic activity annually and handling about 50,000 flights per day while also maintaining a high level of safety. The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the aviation industry, however, face several challenges to the industry’s economic health and safety, including increases in demand and congestion. To meet these challenges, FAA is taking the lead in transforming the current air traffic control system to a new system—the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). Whereas the current system is radar-based, NextGen is a more automated, aircraft-centric, satellite-based system. FAA is charged with implementing NextGen by 2025 with the cooperation and collaboration of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other federal partners.

Under NextGen, pilots and air traffic controllers will rely to a greater extent on automation, changing their roles and responsibilities in ways that will require a full understanding of what are known as human factors issues. Human factors research and development (R&D) studies how humans’ abilities, characteristics, and limitations interact with the design of the equipment they use, the environments in which they function, and the jobs they perform. FAA and NASA—the primary agencies responsible for integrating human factors issues into NextGen—must ensure that NextGen explores human factors issues so that controllers, pilots, and others will operate NextGen components in a safe and efficient manner.
Next gen is vital for economic survival

NAM 2010, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM 2010 ""Expediting Air Traffic Modernization

and Accelerating NextGenn Air Transportation System"" )PHS

NextGen a stronger certainty. The Nation’s Air Transportation System is National Infrastructure: Although we are experiencing an unprecedented economic downturn of global proportions, the rest of the world and our major competitors are heavily investing in infrastructure. Targeting investments that modernize the strongest and most essential parts of our nation’s infrastructure must be encouraged not only for our economic survival and competitiveness, but as a point of national pride. As Congress and the Administration consider the development of a National Infrastructure Bank in the coming months, the NAM believes NextGen could benefit from this innovative approach to infrastructure financing.

Economy Advantage-General Internals

The FAA estimates that by 2018 NextGen will reduce total flight delays by better than 21 percent while providing $22 billion in cumulative benefits to the traveling public, aircraft operators and the FAA. Businesses related to or dependent on aviation risk losing as many as two million jobs every five years if the nation doesn’t implement NextGen. Depending on the pace of investment, NextGen could pay for itself in three years. It would be difficult to match that return on any other infrastructure investment. Civil aviation is an economic engine directly and indirectly contributing more than $1.2 trillion — or 5.6 percent of gross domestic product — to the U.S. economy. It supplies nearly 11 million jobs with a payroll of $369 billion. Civil aviation contributes positively to the U.S. trade balance, creates high paying jobs, keeps just-in-time business models viable and connects all Americans to friends, family and business opportunities.

The aviation system that is part of the life-blood of our economy is poised to face rising demand with limited additional capacity and outdated technology. This could put considerable stress on the system in terms of congestion and efficiency. The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) represents a series of incremental policies, procedures, and technological changes to modernize the air traffic control (ATC) system into a more efficient, state-of-the-art satellite-based system.

Our nation’s economy relies on an air transportation system that moves both people and goods from domestically and throughout the world safely and efficiently. In fact, 5.6% of our economy is represented by the aviation industry, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In an October 2008 report entitled “The Economic Impact of Civil Aviation on the U.S. Economy”, the FAA estimates that by 2022, the failure to implement the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) would cost the US economy $22 billion annually in lost economic activity. Even as early as 2015, an FAA simulation shows that without some of the initial elements of NextGen, there will be far greater air traffic delays than currently experienced, according to the “NextGen Q & A” fact sheet at www.faa.gov.