The National Airspace System’s (NAS) navigation is being modernized thanks to the efforts of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other aviation partners. Essentially, FAA and aviation stakeholders created and released a study titled “Roadmap for Performance-Based Navigation (PBN)” as part of this endeavor. PBN services establish the groundwork for the NAS of tomorrow by facilitating several Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) operational enhancements, technologies, and projects (FAA, 2016). Three timelines are used to describe the progression to a PBN-centric NAS, including “near-term (2016–2020), mid-term (2021–2025), and far-term (2026–2030)” (FAA, 2016, p. 16). Generally, these NGATS plan roadmaps are intended to ensure long-term success.
Near-term periods between 2016 to 2020 were intended to ensure that the initiatives continue to ensure that the NAS infrastructure offers the proper navigation operations at airports and throughout the NAS. The FAA will concentrate on expanding the usage of PBN techniques, especially RNAV STARs (FAA, 2016). In essence, the growth of constellations, incident synchronization, weather assimilation into decisions, precision approach to all air gateways, an expanded airport network, and lowered separation standards were all scheduled in the NGATS plan roadmap. The installation of third-party tools, NextGen aviation spacecraft, delegate separation, and the adoption of many aircraft per runway are all part of the transition to the next timeframe. Additionally, it will be necessary to provide the controller staff with the necessary training on modern PBN protocols and best practices. Generally, since the roadmap release, FAA has established hundreds of navigation protocols throughout the NAS, culminating in safety, accessibility, performance, effectiveness, and environmental advantages.
Accelerating the delivery, usage, and future maintenance of PBN services will be the key goal of the mid-term (2021-2025) timeframe. Creating tools and methods for designing procedures that hasten the transition from criteria to actual frameworks is the goal of this roadmap (FAA, 2016). Essentially, this is achieved by synchronizing standards, information, and design automation systems. Moreover, they intend to finalize the creation of a robotic instrument for routine procedure review, lowering the resource needs for process maintenance. Generally, the FAA hopes to extend vertically assisted strategies to recently qualified runway ends and expand on near-term safety assessment and criteria adjustments to deliver cutting-edge navigation abilities that more operators can use.
Finally, by 2030 or the long term, typical operational conditions will necessitate PBN protocols and flexible routing as the default way of navigation throughout the NAS. Automated capabilities and processes will be firmly integrated due to expanded and changing training on PBN standards and the development of decision support systems (FAA, 2016). FAA is working to ensure that airspace is tailored for PBN operations to increase the flexibility with which aircraft user preferences can be met while guaranteeing that system-level efficiency is preserved. Additionally, to preserve capacity utilization, preferred routing can constantly change to account for anticipated demand or steer aircraft clear of bad weather. International sharing norms, universal cooperative surveillance, and risk-based assessment were all meant to be created during this time. Generally, the basic ground and air trajectory automation, primary satellite navigations, and common weather information are planned to be implemented.
In brief, the roadmaps for NGATS plans are designed to guarantee long-term success. The system was created to help organizations that offer air traffic services and those in charge of the airport, travelers, cargo security, and homeland defense. The NAS will continue to be resilient with PBN services by the near-term end. The conclusion of the midterm will further increase NAS’s resilience. Ultimately, the FAA must concentrate on making PBN the default way of navigation in the far term by finishing the decommissioning of outdated infrastructure.
Reference
Federal Aviation Administration. (2016). Performance based navigation strategy 2016. Web.