Predicts NextGen Will Ease Overburden On Air Travel System

A sweeping report on all modes of travel 30 years in the future has been released by the U.S. DOT, and it forecasts large increases in air travel during that period.

The report "Beyond Traffic: Trends and Choices 2045" looks at how people and goods will be moved around the country in the next three decades.

The report's section on aviation indicates that Air travel has grown steadily since the end of the Great Recession and is expected to continue to grow in the coming years as economic and population growth and an increasingly globalized economy drive demand for domestic and international air travel. The total number of people flying on U.S. airlines is expected to increase by approximately 50 percent over the next two decades, while international air travel to and from the United States will more than double.

This could lead to increased workloads for air traffic controllers and potentially increase congestion at certain busy airports.

Flight delays and congestion cost the economy more than $20 billion each year. In 2014 only 76 percent of domestic flights by U.S. air carriers arrived on time. While many flight delays are due to weather, high airport terminal volumes are a factor in approximately 20 percent of all of flight delays. Some of the busiest airports in the country including the three major New York-area airports—Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark—as well as San Francisco International, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago O’Hare, suffer from high levels of delays which can cause delays throughout the national aviation system.

In 2010, a GAO review of FAA data found that 80 percent of all departure delays can be traced back to seven airports.

The report says that NextGen will be key to keeping pace with the burgeoning demands on the air transportation system, but it will be expensive. "In 2014, cost estimates to retrofit one commercial aircraft with the required foundational NextGen technologies range from $135,000 to $150,000, whereas for general aviation aircraft the costs are estimated to be between $14,000 and $15,000 and estimates to retrofit avionics that would take full advantage of more advanced NextGen operations have ranged up to $525,000 per commercial aircraft," the report said. "FAA estimates that over the next 15 years, $15 billion in expenditures are required from aircraft operators to equip their aircraft with NextGen avionics."

The report point out the decline in U.S. commercial aviation accidents over the past 50 years. In the next 30 years "[s]afety challenges for aviation in the future are likely to be focused around the introduction of new technology and the safe entry of new types of aircraft into the system (e.g. space launches, unmanned aircraft systems) and the maintenance of high levels of safety around increasingly congested hub airports," the report says.

FMI: Full Report