NextGen Descent and Approach

NextGen capabilities will provide a number of improvements to terminal area operations that save fuel, increase predictability, and minimize maneuvers such as holding patterns and delaying vectors.

Enhanced traffic management tools will analyze flights approaching an airport from hundreds of miles away, across the facility boundaries that limit the capability today, and will calculate scheduled arrival times to maximize arrival capacity. This will provide controllers with automated information on airport arrival demand and available capacity to improve sequencing and better balance arrival and departure rates.

Information such as proposed arrival time, sequencing and route assignments will be exchanged with the aircraft via a data communications link to negotiate a final flight path. The final flight path will ensure that the flight has no potential conflicts, and that there is an efficient arrival to the airport, while maintaining overall efficiency of the airspace operation.

With the improved precision of NextGen systems, separation between aircraft can be safely reduced. This will allow for more efficient transitions to the approach phase of flight to high density airports because controllers will have access to more usable airspace. Therefore, descending aircraft can be managed as a unified operation and the airspace can be structured to have multiple precision paths that maintain individual flows to each runway.

Where feasible, equipped aircraft will be able to fly precise vertical and horizontal paths, called optimized profile descents, from cruise down to the runway, saving time and fuel while reducing noise. Airports and their surrounding communities will benefit from these reduced environmental impacts.

Today, the structure of arrival and departure routes does not allow for the most efficient use of the airspace. By redesigning airspace, precision three-dimensional paths can be used in combination to provide integrated arrival and departure operations. More importantly, this more flexible airspace will give controllers better options to safely manage departure and arrival operations during adverse weather, restoring capacity that is currently lost in inclement conditions. Poor visibility conditions dramatically reduce capacity for closely spaced runways. These capacity losses ripple as delays throughout the system. NextGen capabilities will allow us to continue using those runways safely by providing precise path assignments and appropriate safe separation between aircraft assigned on parallel paths, restoring capacity and reducing delays throughout the NAS.

Technical Details

Solution Set - High Density Airports (HD)

Mid Term Operational Capability - Operational Capability Number (Linked to NAS Enterprise Architecture)

• Time-Based Metering Using RNP and RNAV Route Assignments - 104123

Solution Set - Flexible Terminals and Airports (FLEX)

Mid Term Operational Capability - Operational Capability Number (Linked to NAS Enterprise Architecture)

• Ground-Based Augmentation System Precision Approaches - 107107
• Use Optimized Profile Descent - 104124