Mon, Oct 15, 2007
A Critical Conference During A Critical Time
The 52nd annual Air Traffic Control Association Conference and
Exposition will be held October 28-31 in Washington, DC. Event
organizers tell ANN ATCA plans to take an in-depth look at policy
and strategy in ATC.

"Our goal is to provide content that is rich, informative and
achieves our objective of ensuring that a broad spectrum of topics
are addressed," said ATCA President Pete Dumont. "For over 50
years, we have continued to provide the ATC community with a forum
to present knowledge, ideas, and services. During this critical
time in aviation, it will take all of the community's leaders to
effectively and significantly change the way we do things in the
National Air Space.
"Modernized equipment alone will not increase capacity," Dumont
stressed. "It will take an integrated effort to change airspace,
policies and procedures to meet air transportation's demands. There
are many more questions on how we will get to more capacity and the
challenges that lie ahead. These challenges have not been discussed
candidly in an open forum. We hope to change that."
ATCA says its conference will have a very deliberate focus on
the policies and challenges for implementation. While the focus
will be on NextGen in the United States, many countries are either
currently, or will be, facing the same challenges. International
participation at the ATCA Conference and Exposition has always been
strong, and ATCA looks forward to bringing together many of the
leaders of different air navigation organizations and the
military.
The organization believes the move to NextGen is not going to be
accomplished through a gradual evolution of the systems and
policies -- but rather it will take a "LEAP" to get from the
current system to NextGen. This is the basis of ATCA's theme "the
LEAP to NextGen..." as the group notes it may actually take a
quantum leap that will Lead Everyone Away from the Past (LEAP).
While ATCA says the consensus is NextGen is the right way to go,
the group says no one has dealt with how to actually get there.
Hopefully, some answers will come from the conference.
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