Asia desperately needs political consensus and a framework on how to move forward with air traffic management (ATM) as the U.S. and Europe forge ahead with their respective NextGen and Sesar programs. If such a consensus is forthcoming then the Asia-Pacific region could quickly jump ahead by skipping a generation of technology. But if it does not happen, it could become a global air transport bottleneck.
This was the clear message from an open-panel discussion hosted by ITT Corp. at the Singapore Airshow yesterday. Opening the discussion, Marion Blakey, former U.S. FAA Administrator and current president of the Aerospace Industries Association, said ATC modernization ultimately has to have a global, standardized approach. She added that key enabling technologies, such as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B), could allow developing countries “to go straight from movie theatres to DVD without needing VHS and Betamax.”