STATEMENT OF
THE HONORABLE J. RANDOLPH BABBITT,
ADMINISTRATOR,
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
ON
LEVERAGING PUBLIC, PRIVATE, AND ACADEMIC RESOURCES,
NOVEMBER 7, 2011.
Chairman Mica, Congressman Petri, Members of the Committee:
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to highlight the capabilities of the Florida NextGen Test Bed and to discuss the benefits of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This facility represents an exciting expansion of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) NextGen Test Bed environments, and I am pleased to be able to join you here in Florida. The Administration is prioritizing NextGen development and implementation, and the recent renovations at the Florida Test Bed are just one of many recent NextGen-related initiatives and milestones.
In September, the President requested $1B in the American Jobs Act for NextGen to support applied research, advanced development and implementation of solutions for NextGen technologies, applications and procedures. This additional investment in NextGen underscores the Administration’s commitment to the future of our aviation system. More recently, in mid-October, the President officially welcomed a NextGen project – for NextGen procedures in the Houston metroplex - as part of his High Priority Infrastructure projects for expedited regulatory review. That same day, the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness delivered an interim report that included a recommendation to accelerate NextGen performance-based navigation procedures.
This focus and prioritization, when coupled with advances in technology and research capabilities provided by facilities like this one at the Daytona Beach Airport, are the key to hastening the realization of all that NextGen has to offer.
The FAA’s three NextGen Test Beds provide real-world testing and demonstration environments to facilitate research and development. The Test Beds facilitate integration of individual flight information in order to create a simulated NAS environment and to enable end-to-end demonstrations and evaluations. The FAA’s NextGen Test Bed environment is comprised of the William J. Hughes Technical Center near Atlantic City, New Jersey; this facility, the Florida NextGen Test Bed at Daytona Beach International Airport; and the field laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/FAA North Texas facility at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. These environments provide the FAA with a broad range of resources for the development of NextGen concepts and technologies.
Today, we are marking the completion of renovations and enhancements to the Florida NextGen Test Bed which will ensure that the facility is equipped to handle the tests and demonstrations of today, and prepared to accommodate the ideas and innovations of tomorrow. Currently, the facility houses more than a dozen systems, and what you see in place today is just the beginning. The Florida Test Bed will be continually modified over the coming months and years as new demonstrations and technology evaluations are completed and additional air navigation platforms and programs are imagined and engineered.
This is a facility that will provide both government and industry the ability to examine proposed systems for NextGen operational improvements in an environment that permits integration with the full range of NextGen systems and allows evaluation of impacts to operations. We also expect that the Florida Test Bed will act as an open evaluation platform to analyze the feasibility of new technologies and that this facility will be the birthplace of industry-identified and industry-driven concepts to further the progression and increase the benefits of NextGen. We look forward to the great new technologies that the Test Bed’s capacity for innovation, early prototype testing, and demonstrations, coupled with access to the resources at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, are sure to yield.
Generally, it is anticipated that technology and procedures demonstrated at the Florida Test Bed will provide insight into the feasibility, potential benefits, and potential costs that then inform whether the concepts should be further pursued for possible implementation. If pursued, the acquisition process would then ensure that appropriate requirements and cost-benefit analyses are developed to find the best solution for integration into the National Airspace System (NAS). This reduces cost, schedule impact, and risk before embarking on a program, and may help shape the best path ahead.
Since 2008, the FAA has awarded $22 million toward NextGen-related research and development activities under our Other Transaction Agreement with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. This agreement enables the FAA to leverage the experience and expertise of the Florida Test Bed’s seventeen industry partners and has resulted in NextGen solutions that are the product of industry collaboration and which have been proven successful enough to move toward implementation. During an Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) demonstration we used NextGen Voice System technologies to show how UAS pilots and controllers could improve communication performance during long distance operations. Results from the testing enabled us to include requirements for this capability as part of our initial contractual market survey. Demonstrations aimed at improving integration of weather with our automation tools, were translated into technical requirements that are part of our NextGen Weather Processor (NWP) and NextGen Network Enabled Weather (NNEW) programs. Finally, a set of progressive, multi-domain demonstrations focused on defining Flight Data Objects has provided tremendous insight on the type of flight data information that will be needed to support Trajectory Based Operations across multiple automation platforms.
Altogether, about twenty activities have been performed that span the terminal, enroute oceanic, and human factors arenas, with over fifty demonstrations of those activities conducted for various industry, government, and academia stakeholders. These activities have also involved collaboration with other United States Government agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Air Force, and Customs and Boarder Protection, as well as our international counterparts such as Airservices Australia.
In the coming years, we expect to see even more exciting developments here in Daytona Beach as we implement planned activities which will provide live NAS data to support demonstrations and will enable information sharing with other Test Bed sites and remote NextGen partners. We look forward to these and other changes as the Florida Test Bed continues to evolve.
Although we are all pleased to be here in Florida to cut the ribbon on this newly-renovated building and to witness demonstrations of the cutting-edge systems that are up and running in the Test Bed environment, this event should be more than just a celebration of what we have accomplished. Today, we are calling on our industry partners to take advantage of the promise of the public-private partnership represented by facility.
As we look to the future of this place, we also look forward to the evolution of our air transportation system and must take the opportunity to remember the long-term benefits we are working towards. NextGen is a comprehensive overhaul of the NAS that will make air travel more convenient and dependable, while improving safety and efficiency. In a continuous roll-out of improvements and upgrades, the FAA is building the capability to guide and track air traffic more precisely and efficiently to save fuel and reduce noise and pollution. NextGen is a better way of doing business – for the FAA, the airlines, the airports, and the traveling public. It’s better for our environment, better for efficiency and flexibility, better for safety, and better for the economy.
In 2009, civil aviation contributed $1.3 trillion annually to the national economy and constituted 5.2 percent of the gross domestic product, according to FAA’s most recent report on the economic impact of civil aviation. It generated more than 10 million jobs, with earnings of $397 billion. NextGen is vital to protecting those contributions. The current system simply cannot accommodate anticipated growth in the aviation industry. Congestion continues to increase at many of our nation’s busiest hub airports, a problem that will only be exacerbated now that traffic levels are starting to rebound from the impact of the economic recession.
Between 2007 and 2011, approximately $2.8 billion has been appropriated for NextGen. The FAA estimates the development of NextGen will require between $15 and $22 billion from 2012 to 2025. These figures represent important investments with substantial returns. Our latest estimates show that by 2018, NextGen air traffic management improvements will reduce total delays, in flight and on the ground, by approximately 35 percent, compared with what would happen if we maintained our current system. This delay reduction will provide $23 billion in cumulative benefits through 2018 to aircraft operators, the traveling public, and the FAA. Additionally, we will save about 1.4 billion gallons of aviation fuel during this period, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 14 million tons.
To fully understand the impacts of our ongoing efforts, it is important to highlight some examples of where NextGen is already improving safety and adding real dollars to the bottom line:
- Using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), a GPS-based technology, aircraft are able to fly more safely and efficiently in previously challenging areas. ADS-B equipped helicopters flying over the Gulf of Mexico are benefiting from radar-like air traffic services for the first time. ADS-B radio stations deployed along the shoreline and on oil platforms blanket the area with air traffic surveillance, increasing the safety of operations. This same surveillance improves efficiency in the Gulf through more direct routing of ADS-B equipped helicopters, reducing both their operating cost and environmental impact. In Colorado, new surveillance technologies are enabling controllers to track aircraft flying through challenging mountainous terrain. Currently, over half of ADS-B ground infrastructure has been deployed.
- Southwest Airlines started using GPS-based Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches at a dozen airports this year. The airline says that it could save $25 for each mile they save by using a shorter route.
- Alaska Airlines has been a leader in using RNP approach procedures at Juneau International Airport. They can fly precisely through mountainous terrain in low visibility conditions thanks to the higher navigational accuracy of GPS. The airline estimates it would have cancelled 729 flights last year into Juneau alone due to bad weather if it were not for the GPS-based RNP approaches.
- In Atlanta, Delta Airlines reports saving 60 gallons of fuel per flight by using the more efficient descent procedures we have designed under NextGen. Aircraft descend continually to the runway with engines idle, as opposed to descending in a stair-step fashion, using the engines and burning fuel to power up at each level-off point.
- We conducted Initial Tailored Arrival (ITA) flight demonstrations at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami and have now progressed to operational capability in all three locations. ITAs are pre-negotiated arrival paths through airspace of multiple air traffic control facilities; they limit vectoring and minimize the time the aircraft spends maintaining level flight during its decent. ITAs differ from other types of Optimized Profile Descents (OPDs) in that they are assigned by controllers to specific approaches and tailored to the characteristics of a limited number of FANS-equipped aircraft types – 747s, 777s, A330s, A340s and A380s. We estimate that the 747s saved an average of 176 gallons of fuel per arrival in ITAs and 78 gallons per flight in partial ITAs, compared with conventional approaches. For 777s, the corresponding savings were 99 gallons in full ITAs and 43 gallons in partial ITAs.
We anticipate seeing additional benefits in the near term. The “Greener Skies over Seattle” initiative should save literally millions of gallons of fuel annually, cut noise, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. The FAA estimates that airlines using RNP procedures at Seattle Tacoma International Airport will save several millions of dollars per year at today’s fuel prices. And that number is only going to get larger as more airlines equip. With the “Greener Skies over Seattle” initiative, aircraft will emit less carbon dioxide – about 22,000 metric tons less per year. That’s like taking more than 4,000 cars off the streets of the Seattle region.
These are just a few of the benefits that we are seeing already from our investments. However, we cannot afford to be short-sighted. A true transformation in the way we deliver air traffic services takes planning and time, and the long-term benefits offered by this new way of doing business – safety, efficiency, access, decreased environmental impact – must always be at the forefront.
NextGen operation capabilities will make the NAS safer. ADS-B improvements in situational awareness, on the ground and in aircraft, will increase controllers’ and pilots’ individual and combined ability to avoid potential danger. Among other benefits, this could provide valuable time savings in search and rescue efforts. Appropriately equipped aircraft will be able to receive information displayed directly to the flight deck about nearby traffic weather, and flight-restricted areas.
More precise tracking and information-sharing will improve the situational awareness of pilots, enabling them to plan and carry out safe operations in ways they cannot do today. Air traffic controllers will become more effective guardians of safety through automation and simplification of their most routine tasks, coupled with better awareness of conditions in the airspace they control. Additionally, NextGen will facilitate the implementation of Safety Management System processes for the air traffic controllers’ use.
Advances in tracking and managing operations on airport surfaces will make runway incursions less likely. Fusing new surface radar coverage now in use at 35 airports with ADS-B surveillance of aircraft and ground vehicles will increase situational awareness, particularly when linked with runway status lights. Collaborative decision making will increase everyone’s understanding of what others are doing.
Starting with pre-takeoff advisories, departure instructions, and reroutes for pilots, we will use data messaging increasingly in favor of voice communications between pilots and controllers, reducing opportunities for error or misunderstanding. Voice channels will be preserved for the most critical information exchanges.
As with safety, our work to enhance aviation’s influence on the environment also benefits – and is a beneficiary of – NextGen. The operational improvements that reduce noise, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse-gas emissions from aircraft are the tip of the FAA’s environmental iceberg. Equally important are the other components of the agency’s environmental approach – aircraft and engine technology advances, sustainable fuels, policy initiatives and advances in science and modeling.
Environmental benefits of operational improvements are simple and direct. When we improve efficiency in the NAS, operators almost always save time and fuel. Burning less fuel produces less carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions. Some of our NextGen improvements, notably approaches in which aircraft spend less time maintaining level flight and thus can operate with engines at idle, reduce ground noise too. But operational benefits go only so far; their net system-wide effect can be offset by growth of the aviation system.
To accommodate system growth, we are supporting development of aircraft, engine, and fuel technology. In 2009, we established the Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise program to bring promising new airframe and engine technologies to maturity, ready to be applied to commercial designs, within five to eight years. Similarly, we are part of a government-industry initiative, the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative, to develop sustainable low-emission alternative fuels and bring them to market.
We have developed and are using the NextGen Environmental Management System (EMS) to integrate environmental protection objectives into NextGen planning and operations. The EMS provides a structured approach for managing our responsibilities to improve environmental performance and stewardship. We also are analyzing the effect on aviation environmental policy and standards, and of market-based measures, including cap-and-trade proposals.
Additionally, many airports will benefit from substantial improvements in efficiency, access, surveillance, environmental benefits, and safety. Surveillance, situational awareness, and safety will improve at airports with air traffic control radar services as we deploy ADS-B ground stations across the NAS and update our automation systems, and as operators equip their aircraft for it. The FAA also plans to publish Wide Area Augmentation System Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance (LPV) approach procedures for all suitable runway ends by 2016.
We are making important progress on a number of efforts to show how better situational awareness and pacing on the ground will give operations and the traveling public more reliability and save them time, while also managing environmental impacts. We can cut fuel consumption and emissions by reducing the time and number of aircraft idling on taxiways waiting for takeoff, or for open gates slots upon arrival. Also, we can reduce equipment wear – stop-and-go accelerations are hard on engines and other parts, and they also increase the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
A major success in 2010 was the minimal disruption that occurred during a four-month runway resurfacing and widening project in one of the nation’s busiest airspaces. The longest runway at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) had to be expanded to accommodate new, larger aircraft. The project also included taxiway improvements and construction of holding pads. To minimize disruption during construction, JFK’s operators turned to a collaborative effort using departure queue metering, in which each departing aircraft from JFK’s many airlines was allocated a precise departure slot and waited for it at the gate rather than congesting taxiways. The procedure limited delays so well, it was extended after the runway work was completed.
Surface initiatives like these make important contributions across the board – they improve situational awareness and safety, they reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and they reduce tarmac delays – in addition to making a real difference for aircraft operators and passengers.
The benefit for aircraft operators in the NAS will come from two major categories of improvements – efficiency and capacity, and access. Much of the time, efficiency and capacity go together. When we reduce the distance needed for the safe separation of aircraft, reduce delays from weather and other disruptions, and increase flight-path and procedures options for controllers as they maintain the flow of traffic, we improve capacity as well.
Access issues center on runways at major airports, affecting mainly airlines, and airports and airspace that lack radar coverage, a problem for general aviation. NextGen will improve efficiency in operations that involve closely spaced parallel runways and converging and intersecting runways. Area Navigation (RNAV) and Required Navigation Performance (RNP) are improving efficiency and capacity in departures and approaches. For general aviation, ADS-B will enable controllers to track properly equipped aircraft in non-radar areas covered by ADS-B ground stations. General aviation operators equipped for ADS-B In will receive traffic and weather information directly in the flight deck, providing them with greater situational awareness. Wide Area Augmentation System LPV approach procedures will give properly equipped aircraft Instrument Landing System (ILS)-like capability at non-ILS airports. Through our new NAV-Lean process, we are working to streamline the development and implementation of new instrument procedures to ensure that users can benefit from them as quickly as possible. We plan to accelerate design and implementation of Performance Based Navigation procedures and optimized descents to achieve their benefits sooner rather than later.
Just last month, the FAA, in collaboration with airlines in Chicago, used an RNP approach to Midway, de-coupling Midway operations from O’Hare. By doing so, O’Hare was able to maintain operations at 92 airplanes an hour, with no additional delays, while landing airplanes at Midway. Had the procedure not been deployed, the ground delay program would have limited O’Hare to 68 airplanes per hour.
Optimization of Airspace and Procedures in the Metroplex (OAPM) is a systematic, integrated and expedited approach to implementing Performance Based Navigation (PBN) procedures and associated airspace changes. This program was developed in direct response to RTCA Task Force 5 recommendations on the quality, timeliness, and scope of metroplex solutions. OAPM focuses on a geographic area, rather than a single airport. It considers multiple airports and the airspace surrounding a metropolitan area, including all types of operations (air carrier, general aviation, military, etc.), a well as connectivity with other metroplexes.
The OAPM process uses two types of collaborative teams including FAA and industry partners. Study Teams recommend conceptual airspace and procedure solutions, and then Design and Implementation (D&I) Teams design, refine, review, and implement those recommendations within a near-term three-year timeframe. To date, 21 Metroplex sites have been identified and prioritized with input from FAA and industry. Study Teams have completed their activities in Washington, DC, North Texas, Charlotte, Northern California and Houston. Study Teams are nearing completion in Southern California and Atlanta. Identified potential benefits ranging from $6M to $26M per year have been estimated at each site. D&I activities are in process in the Washington, DC metro and North Texas locations with additional projects soon to follow in Houston Atlanta, Charlotte, Northern California, and Southern California.
In order to achieve these benefits, we know that we need to continue working with our partners in the aviation community. Making sure that we are all on the same page about our expectations, our obligations, and our capabilities is essential to the successful planning, development, and execution of NextGen. In recognition of the need for clarity and transparency, the Administration, in conjunction with the airlines, is actively developing new PBN dashboards that will provide additional information on the use of high value procedures that are already deployed and also clarify the development status of high value new procedures around the country.
The FAA continues to expand its work on demonstrations, trials and initial deployment of NextGen systems and procedures. NAS operators and users – particularly participants in the demonstrations and trials – are benefiting from them. But there is a chicken-and-egg nature to the economic and policy decisions that will have the most influence over the extent and timing of future benefits.
On the one hand, achieving NextGen’s benefits depends heavily on aircraft operators and other stakeholders investing in the avionics, ground equipment, staffing, training, and procedures they will need to take advantage of the infrastructure that the FAA puts in place to transform the aviation system in the coming decade and beyond. On the other hand, the willingness of operators and other stakeholders to make these investments depends critically on the business case for them – analyses of how valuable these benefits will be, and that they have confidence that the FAA can deliver the infrastructure in the time frames and manner required for those benefits to be realized.
When costs are clear but benefits are even slightly cloudy, there is an important information gap which the FAA must help fill. We are working to do this in two ways. First, we conduct broad, system-level analyses, estimating how integrated NextGen benefits will develop and grow over a period of years. This work draws on modeling and simulations of how NAS operations will change and what effects the changes will have. The FAA must continue to work closely with the aviation community to ensure these benefits are well understood by those who need to invest in NextGen.
Second, using facilities like the Florida NextGen Test Bed, we conduct a wide range of demonstrations and operational trials of specific NextGen systems and procedures. These demonstrations, conducted in real-world settings by operations and development personnel using prototype equipment, are invaluable. They provide all of the stakeholders with the opportunity to see the very real benefits that NextGen can bring. They mitigate program risks and show us whether we are on the right track in our technical approaches. They provide valuable insight into how equipment should be designed for operability, maintainability, and a sound human-automation interface. And they are instrumental in advancing our understanding of the benefits to be gained from the capabilities being demonstrated.
Information from the demonstrations also helps us refine our models of NAS operations and how these operations will change, along with the corresponding overall estimate of NextGen benefits. Further, it provides direct measurements of the ways specific NextGen capabilities can benefit NAS stakeholders and the public, enabling stakeholders to improve their own estimates of the benefits and costs of buying equipment for NextGen and to be more confident of their analyses.
We are working steadily and carefully to bring NextGen to fruition. We are hopeful that the Florida NextGen Test Bed, in conjunction with our other testing environments, will spur innovation and collaboration by and with industry, and hasten the realization of the multitude of benefits NextGen has to offer.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.