Government-Industry Cooperation

Input from all stakeholders is necessary to design the NextGen system so that it will work for everyone and provide the most benefits.

The FAA is also working with selected air carriers to obtain ADS-B data for operational, training, and experience purposes, including JetBlue along the east coast and United Airlines over the Pacific Ocean. Tests, trials, and experi­ments are on-going at all times in various places in a joint effort between the FAA and stakehold­ers, particularly the airlines, to find better and new ways to utilize the new technology.

Commercial air carriers and the FAA have established an unprecedented system of sharing proprietary information (from the airlines) and internal data from the FAA under the acronym

ASIAS (Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing), from which 65 databases have been created from 43 commercial carriers, accounting for more than 95 percent of commercial opera­tions in the NAS. These databases are used to evaluate safety in emerging systems, and point to the cooperative and joint effort of government and private enterprise to enhance safety in the air transportation system.

Concepts are evaluated and tested for inte­gration at the William J. Hughes Technical Cen­ter in Atlantic City using simulators for aircraft cockpits, air traffic control tower interiors, airline operations centers, and unmanned aircraft system ground control centers. Test bed facilities, which is a term used to describe a platform for experi­mentation, have been established in Florida and

Improved Airport Surface Operations and Airspace Access in 2011

FIGURE 36-2 FAA-designated Metropiex areas.

North Texas, with the Department of Defense Research and Engineering Network being added in 2012. The training of the FAA workforce is also in process.