performance today. The following five work areas were recommended and approved by
the NAC:
• Deconflicting Arrivals in the NY Area
• Improving Departure Throughput from the New York and Philadelphia area
• Improving Airport Arrival Throughput to New York and Philadelphia
• Easing Key Airspace Congestion Points that Restrict NEC Throughput
• Improve Situational Awareness and Flow Management Across NEC
We're going to focus on the execution of today's operations first, with a target to achieve
these impro vements by the summer of 2018. Longer - term NEC implemen tations like
new Performance Based Navigation (PBN) procedures, developed in partnership with
communities from Boston to Washington, will lay the groundwork for future Trajectory
Based Operations (TBO) that are currently in the research and development sta ges.
NEC improvements will require continued collaboration across all ATO service units, and
our strategic partnership with the Office of NextGen. You can read more about the
commitments in this full report from the NAC subcommittee .
If anyone has doubts about what can be achieved through FAA and industry
collaboration, take a look at the Data Comm program – a complex sys tems - of - systems
program requiring automation, network, and avionics interoperability. It met all
accelerated delivery dates and is now operational at 55 towers across the NAS,
completing deployment 29 months ahead of schedule and under budget. Controllers
process more than 36,000 Data Comm operations every week.
At the NAC meeting, a joint analysis team re ported that flights using Data Comm for
route revision clearance exhibit shorter taxi - out times compared to those that use voice,
with savings between .2 and 8.5 minutes. This same report also analyzed the use of
Optimized Profile Descents in the Boston a nd Chicago areas, showing benefits to both
safety and efficiency.
Regardless of the initiatives mentioned above, the lasting lesson from our work with
NAC members highlights the value of working collaboratively and shared commitment.
We can't go it alone, and the technologies we develop and deploy will be adopted based
on the tangible benefits they provide to our stakeholder s.
Thanks everyone!
Teri L. Bristol ATO Chief Operating Officer
