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12 NextGen Capabilities for Airports Safety Improvement Due to Airport Vehicle Tracking in the Movement Area: At some airports, multilateration can be used to precisely track airplanes and vehicles on the airport surface by interrogating installed transponders and triangulating position from the signals. This capability is not mandatory, and airports that have this FAA equip- ment installed can choose whether or not they want to purchase transponders for some or all of the vehicles that are allowed access to the movement area. The positions of these ground vehicles can be displayed to airport operations managers and to the FAA airport traffic control tower, facilitating more effective communications with ATC regarding air- port vehicles. It is also possible to equip these surface vehicles with moving map displays, which increases the situational awareness of the vehicle operators. Surface Operations Improvements Due to Collaborative Decision Making and Departure Metering: Experience gained at JFK and other airports showed that careful collaboration and data sharing among the FAA, aircraft owners, and the airport operator can produce significant reductions in surface congestion and emissions. The
13 program at JFK was initiated by the airlines and the airport operator, initially without the involvement of the FAA ATO. The airport operator can play a key role in reducing surface congestion by providing real-time data on the surface locations of aircraft. However, the FAA surface program is not yet integrated with airport-initiated surface improvements, like those at JFK. Improved Capability for Multiple Runway Operations: Capacity improvements result from either reduced separations between aircraft or more simultaneous operations at an airport. For example, capacity improvements can result from NextGen-enabled reductions in parallel runway separation requirements for simultaneous (independent) runway operations and reductions in parallel runway separations for dependent (stag- gered arrival) operations. Another example is the RECAT program, which is included un- der FAAâs multiple runway operations program, where researchers found that regrouping aircraft types according to similarities in their wake turbulence characteristics, coupled with a reordering of aircraft in an arrival queue, resulted in safe reduction in separation between certain aircraft and an increase in airport capacity depending on the aircraft- fleet-mix. A third example is the use of equivalent lateral spacing operations (ELSO), which enables reduced departure divergence angles and increased departure capacity. These improvements potentially allow airports to achieve greater capacity from their existing runways or justify locations of new runways or runway extensions that potentially offer lower cost and fewer community impacts. Increased Access during Instrument Conditions with ILS: GBAS is designed to greatly increase the accuracy of the basic GPS signal, which could enable GBAS-based landing system (GLS) approaches today with a decision height as low as 200 feet above the runway and has the promise of enabling very low visibility CAT II/III approaches in the future. This system is designed so that a single installation can permit approaches to all of an airportâs runways. It is available for sale on the commercial market. GLS approaches have been implemented at only a small number of commercial airports in the U.S. mainly as overlays to existing ILS approaches. Flight Time and Fuel Savings with PBN: These procedures allow extremely precise flight tracks, which can be flown automatically using on-board flight management sys- tem equipment. They have the potential to offer more direct routing to certain runways, resulting in fewer miles flown and reducing fuel burn. Such PBN procedures offer airports better adherence to noise abatement flight procedures, but can also concentrate flight tracks so much that adverse public reaction can occur where the frequency of direct overflights increases. In addition, new PBN flight tracks will also generate noise exposure where previously there was none. Improved Data Availability with System Wide Information Management (SWIM): The NextGen SWIM technology will provide a broad network on which many different types of data can be shared between stakeholders. These data will include airport operational status, weather information, flight data, status of special use airspace, and NAS restrictions. While most of the benefit of this program will accrue to air carri- ers, airports will be able to access the data to assist with operational planning like snow removal or better coordination of airport surface operations.
