Since everyone agrees that rapidly increasing traffic volumes over the next 20 years will demand the FAA’s NextGen solution–or something very similar–it came as a surprise to hear a recognized authority ask whether there actually will be such a system. This is the almost unthinkable question that Neil Planzer, Boeing Phantom Works v-p for strategy and advanced air traffic management, posed at an Atlantic City, N.J. technical symposium in May hosted by the FAA, NASA and the Air Traffic Control Association.
Planzer, who spent 25 years with the FAA, some of them as director of its air traffic program requirements and its air traffic systems requirements service, was not saying there should not be such a system. Instead he was questioning whether the current processes within the FAA’s Joint Planning & Development Office (JPDO) to define and implement NextGen are up to the task. Planzer is not alone in holding this view.
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