NATCA Bookshelf

Director of Communications Doug Church: dchurch@natcadc.org; 301-346-8245 Associate Director of Communications, Art & Design Laura Roose: lroose@natcadc.org; 202-220-9814 Communications Specialist Sarah Zilonis: szilonis@natcadc.org; 202-266-9844. Multimedia Specialist Chris Ray: cray@natcadc.org; 202-266-9875 WEEKLY UPDATE FROM FAA ATO COO TERI BRISTOL Navigating Change in the NAS Hi everyone. Last week, we held an ATO Leadership Summit in Leesburg, Virginia. The theme was Navigating Change, and we discussed our strategic approach to handling the changes we're seeing with NextGen implementation, and integrating unmanned aircraft and commercial space operations into the NAS. More specifically, we looked at how we can best collaborate with FAA and industry stakeholders, what strategic activities need to be completed in these areas, and the schedule by which these activities should be completed. We also discussed employee engagement. With NextGen, we continue to focus on four near-term priorities: Performance Based Navigation, Data Communications, increasing surface data sharing, and making multiple runway operations more efficient. We're also putting a focus on the busy Northeast corridor. Today, we can determine with a good degree of accuracy where an aircraft is right now. But when NextGen is fully implemented, we'll know with a great deal of accuracy where it intends to be at any point in time along the way to its destination. This time-based traffic management system – also known as four-dimensional (4D) trajectory management will yield a more predictable, efficient and flexible airspace system. It will help optimize overall airspace capacity and minimize the impact of disruptions due to weather, or system or facility outages. Last fall we completed our Commercial Space Integration Roadmap. It covers a list of strategic activities in areas like: procedures and standards, policy and regulation, systems and capabilities, safety, integration planning, and others. The Roadmap also provides a schedule for when specific activities should be accomplished in the near, mid and long-term timeframe. Some of the near-term initiatives include creating introductory training to educate ATO personnel on space vehicle operations, and establishing reporting requirements for space safety events. We're also working to build greater collaboration and coordination with the space industry. With UAS, we expect that in the coming years, we'll see more complex types of activity like night operations, small UAS over people, and drones that fly beyond the pilot's visual line of sight. At the Summit we talked about the efforts needed to support UAS integration in the next five to ten years. We continue to work with NASA on a UAS Traffic Management concept, and we're also testing technologies that would detect

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