FAA partnerships with aviation community stakeholders are essential to gain maximum near-term benefits, plan for future improvements, give meaningful consideration to community concerns and overcome challenges in making the transformation from the legacy air transportation system to NextGen. The FAA has allied itself with air carriers, aircraft and equipment manufacturers, airports and the communities they serve, research facilities, federal agencies, foreign air navigation service providers, general aviation operators, trade associations, labor unions, and others to update the National Airspace System. As these relationships grow and evolve, the opportunities to advance NextGen increase as well.
Industry Collaboration
The NextGen Advisory Committee (NAC), a federal advisory committee composed of aviation stakeholder executives, is the most prominent avenue for industry collaboration. It advises the FAA on policy-level issues facing the aviation community in implementing NextGen. The FAA also forms partnerships through memorandums of agreement to improve air carrier equipage rates and consults with the Performance Based Operations Rulemaking Committee in designing instrument approach procedure charts and identifying challenges for deploying new combinations of navigation specifications.
Interagency Planning Office
The Interagency Planning Office (IPO) executes the collaborative processes needed to ensure efficient coordination among our federal and international partners whose decisions impact NextGen. Our federal partner agencies include NASA, and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce. Other federal partners are engaged through the NextGen Executive Board, which includes the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The IPO provides direction to the multi-agency and international partnering organizations focused on future NextGen technology, policy and collaborative activities.
NextGen Priorities
The FAA worked with the aviation industry, through the NextGen Advisory Committee, to develop a plan to implement a number of high-priority NextGen capabilities. The plan's foundation was earlier NAC work, which recommended the FAA focus on NextGen capabilities in four areas: Multiple Runway Operations, Performance Based Navigation, Surface Operations and Data Communications. See how implementation of these capabilities, that will provide significant near-term benefits to National Airspace System users, is progressing.
Workforce Engagement
The people operating and maintaining the air transportation system need to be involved at every step to ensure the smoothest possible transition to NextGen. Working together with technical operations employees ensures the most efficient, cost-effective maintenance program is handled during equipment and systems development rather than in production and deployment. When air traffic controllers are involved in the testing, training, and deployment of new equipment and procedures, they become invested in the successful use of the new technologies and procedures and are able to help identify improvements. Learn more about how we work across the FAA to develop NextGen.
