Nextgen Case Analysis

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Challenges If we continue along the present path: funding shortfalls, and bandaged NextGen Implementation plans, NextGen will probably eventually get fielded. Current estimates show program completion in 2025 or beyond, but the system might be partially obsolete by that time (FAA, 2015a and Breselor, 2015). Funding shortfalls are not the only threat to NextGen. Current talk in Congress and in the industry are calling for total reform of the FAA. At a congressional hearing in March 2015, industry leaders called for privatization of many of the FAA 's current duties (Parker, 2015). A private, possibly non-profit entity could provide more value for dollars spent and not be necessarily hampered by the piecemeal funding under which the FAA currently operates. Privatization ideas include managing Air Traffic Control duties, employees, and facilities into an independent corporation (Halsey, 2015a). Paul Rinaldi, President of the Air Traffic controllers ' union and Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines, are among those who support privatization. (Subcommittee on Aviation, 2015). A …show more content…
Projections in 2003 indicated that air traffic would increase by 200-300% within 20 years, but forecasts have fallen woefully short (Pruchnicki, 2010). Rather than increasing, air traffic has actually decreased radically over the last 20 years (Lewis, 2015). FAA data shows that airport operations peaked in 1999 and total operations are now down 28% (Lewis, 2015). This means that one of the main justifications for NextGen--that it could handle the additional workload--is no longer a main driver of the system. Despite the lack of growth, additional capacity is a good thing. Someday, perhaps under a privatized structure, general aviation might recover, Air traffic might again increase, and it would be nice to have the means in place to handle additional

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