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.

FMI: www.atca.org/atca52nd.asp