There is widespread agreement that NextGen is a game-changer when it comes to air travel. It will help us meet environmental goals and improve our economic health, while increasing airspace capacity by two- or three-fold. But, there are a number of hurdles to overcome before NextGen is implemented, and funding is chief among them.

First, The FAA has been operating under a series of continuing resolutions and extensions since 2007. Failure to have a permanent spending bill has had a domino effect as critical NextGen projects are delayed under funding extensions.

Second, deployment of such a massive project requires sustained government commitment. To fully fund FAA and the capital expenditures necessary for NextGen, we believe a more significant contribution from the Treasury’s General Fund in excess of 25 percent is needed. General taxpayer support is appropriate for our national airspace system because all Americans benefit in one way or another from services FAA provides.

Finally, the “long pole in the tent” to the challenge of getting NextGen implemented is not the infrastructure or FAA funding – it’s equipping the civil fleet with the avionics necessary to fly in the new system.

The FAA may not require operators to equip with ADS-B avionics until 2020.Operators both commercial and private are in no shape financially to make a multi-billion dollar fleet modification. So, we are likely to have a period when the ground system will be up and running, but the other half of the puzzle – the “airborne infrastructure”, if you will – will not be in place.

The obvious solution is to provide equipage incentives for operators to shrink the gap and reap the benefits of NextGen as soon as possible. A tax holiday or rebate, an infrastructure bank, a “green” fund – there are a number of ways in which we can accelerate NextGen’s benefits without putting too much of a burden on our system’s operators.

I really believe that aircraft equipage is as much a part of our national airspace system infrastructure as ADS-B, airports and runways. Taxpayer dollars were used to help build our current air traffic control system. When you think of equipage as air traffic control technology on board aircraft, a public subsidy makes a lot of sense.

We’re talking to Congress and the administration to make sure they know how important our industry is to the successful implementation of NextGen, and sensitize them to the fact that in today’s economic climate, civil aviation operators are certainly not liquid enough to fund a multi-billion dollar equipment upgrade and that the government needs to step in with incentives and greater investment and we all need to put our energies into making sure the FAA is reauthorized this year.

Not my area of expertise, but it seems to me that the $100-200 Billion High Speed Rail capital costs would serve a heck of a lot more people if it was redirected to NextGEN. I expect that it would also have a greater impact on greenhouse gas reduction than rail and serve a far wider demographic base.

Gregory Albjerg, Vice President and National Director of Airspace Planning for HNTB Corporation, submitted the following response:

Many of the airlines and general aviation operators have indicated that they are willing to invest in new technology if that technology provides clear benefits. The element of the NextGen system that has great potential to provide early benefits is precise satellite based navigation (typically known as RNAV and RNP). The FAA has been pursuing an aggressive program to implement the development of these procedures. However, to date the majority of them, especially for arrival to airports have been “overlay procedures” based upon existing conventional ATC equipment.

The FAA’s general reasoning for focusing on overlay procedures is that implementing truly new procedures takes too long, as they involve airspace design and environmental review and approval. These overlays do provide some benefit in reduced pilot and controller workload and sometimes shorter flight distances, but they do not provide the desperately needed capacity increases at airports and areas of constrained airspace.

The only way to get near term increases in capacity is to develop new routes that are only possible using technologies such as RNP. In many cases these are new routes into and out of airports that are able to avoid congested airspace or hazardous terrain.

Airports are in the best position to take the lead and are striving hard to reduce their carbon footprints by developing better routes and reducing air traffic congestion. Most importantly, however, is the fact that airports best understand the complicated issues of noise mitigation that go along with revised routes into and out of an airport, and they are best-suited to lead in implementing new cost effective routes. Airports need to work in close cooperation with the airlines, general aviation and the FAA to accomplish these new routes. Ultimately, the FAA will formally develop the routes which call for resources that many airports do not have, especially as they are under pressure from the airlines to reduce costs as much as possible.

To accomplish this, the new FAA funding legislation should provide for and set aside significant funds for grants to airports for the purpose of working with the FAA, airlines and general aviation to develop new routes into and out of airports. The routes developed need to clearly alleviate congestion and/or provide shorter more efficient flight distances. Federal grants are justified since alleviating congestion at hub airports effects the entire national airspace system. The priority should be given to the top 35 Operational Evolution Plan (OEP) airports, and reliever airports and secondary airports that share airspace with the OEP airports. However, all airports that can show the potential to benefit the national airspace system through improved efficiencies and reductions in delays should be eligible for the grants. The FAA funding legislation should also include increased funds for that part of the FAA that designs new airspace procedures.

With strong dedicated funding for developing new routes and redesigning airspace, the airlines and general aviation will be much more willing to invest in the equipment they need on board their aircraft to make NextGen work. This will give the “best equipped, best served” strategy a chance to work.

While there is little question that airline passengers benefit from a safer and more efficient air transportation system, the over-riding benefits to the larger nation make this a clear example of a public good deserving of public funding. Not only do safer and busier skies offer signficant potential economic benefits for every region of the country as well as the nation as a whole, but thanks to insurance and public investment, the costs of accidents and delays are broadly distributed rather than being confined to passengers or the workers and shareholders of the carriers. Further, there is evidence of market failure here, based on the unwillingness or inability of competitive private carriers to support the needed investments in systems that offer such clear and urgently-needed benefits. All of these point to the need for public leadership on this issue and not still another "voluntary" jaw-boning session. Should we decide some of the private benefits created by a better air traffic control system justify levying fees to support some share of the costs -- which is certainly a defensible argument -- that can be done as part of a broader refrom that does not delay the implementation of the new systems any further.

It is hard to imagine a more obvious candidate for public investment or a sadder story of the nation's inability to put larger national aims above the self-interest of various parties. As someone who first focused on this issue when I was a member of President Clinton's transition team almost a generation ago, I still find the lack of leadership from the nation's capital deeply disappointing. If we can't put aside parochial and special interests here, when the shared impact on our lives and our economy is so clear, it's little wonder more complex issues like health care reform wallow in swamps of self-interest.

This is a (yet another) complex issue that has no clear answer. The obvious response may be that the system's cost should be borne solely by those who use it. That seems fair, though the ongoing debate over just how much of the burden should rest with the commercial industry and how much should be paid by private aviation makes it seem far from easy.

But like any national grid, the entire populace benefits from its safe and efficient operation. A sizable percentage of both national and global prosperity and connectivity is rooted in air travel so that a poorly functioning ATC network adds indirect costs for a multitude of products and services utilized even by non-flyers.

There is also a juxtaposition in which travelers are increasingly benefiting from cutting edge technology as they book and are processed by airlines even as the aircraft they board are controlled by systems related to technology long ago discarded by most consumers in their
private lives.

When our roads and bridges crumble there is public outcry and pressure to correct the situation. But because ATC systems are only one component of air travel, unseen by the end consumer, we rather rail at the carriers for delays and inefficiencies over which they often have no control. Most travelers assume "ATC delay" is just an airline ploy to cover shoddy operations.

Finally, because a portion of the sky is always filled with military aircraft charged with national security, we all share a stake in that activity as well.

Therefore, with so many stakeholders, full compliance in a public-private partnership would seem the only answer. Those protesting the cost of compliance need only look at automobiles to see a parallel situation. Seat belts and airbags have been shown to substantively increase safety and consequently are mandated in all cars sold. This increases asset costs even for those who never encounter a situation in which they are deployed. Yet for the benefit of all, that cost must be part of every automobile purchase.

Sorry Mr. Cessna, if you want to occupy the same space that my 777 will fly through, for both your sake and mine, we need to have you carrying the same gadgets. And both users need to be investors in a grid that is able to operate efficiently in the 21st century.

Just to get our discussion going, let me lead off by offering a broader perspective than just how to fund certain technologies.

First, we agree that our next generation air traffic control system needs to continue to evolve into a satellite based system. Of course, progress has already been made in the sense that there are more GPS approaches today (satellite based) than there are instrument landing systems (ground based). Furthermore, there are tremendous opportunities still out there to modernize the system with more GPS and WAAS enabled approaches to airports across the nation. This increases the utilization of reliever airports and other airports where business aircraft would be more likely to travel when provided with better landing approaches.

Second, there needs to be a better understanding of who has already invested. The technology in our modern general aviation fleet provides extraordinary capabilities today. With the certification of equipment designed to send the GPS information in today's general aviation aircraft to ground based receivers, the cost of the additional equipment should come down. But there are two critical steps: certification of what goes into the aircraft and the buildout of the ground based receivers that the FAA is hard at work on now.

The third piece of this conversion relates to what the controllers are seeing on screens. While there is a system up and running in Alaska, the full conversion of the system in the lower 48 will take time.

While investments are needed, we should take full advantage of steps to modernize our air traffic control system over the next three to four years. These steps should include the certification and installation of ground and aircraft based technologies that yield a genuine return on the dollars invested.

We have a great example related to the GPS system itself. As better navigation and situation awareness became available through the evolution of the GPS system over the last two decades, more and more general aviation pilots installed these technologies. Aircraft owners and pilots saw advantages to these remarkable systems and made the investment to install them and then invested in training to fully utilize them.

Show aircraft owners and pilots systems that will allow them to fly more efficiently and more safely and the equipment will be installed and utilized.

One important reason for providing the FAA with a multiyear reauthorization is to allow the build out of the ground receivers fundemental to the NextGen program and the certification of key components of the system. These investments are critical before anyone can gain a return on the money necessary to place equipment in aircraft regardless of the ultimate funding source.