What's keeping FAA's NextGen air traffic control on the runway?

Ten years into the program, new technology for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Next Generation Air Transportation System is gradually coming online. But non-technical issues are delaying many of the promised benefits and creating skepticism in the airline industry.

“NextGen is more than a technical platform, it has to be useable,” FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta told a House panel July 17.

Implementing the program is a delicate balance of integrating technology with training and policy across multiple air carriers, the FAA and airports. New GPS-based navigation systems have to be installed in aircraft, and new tracking systems, monitors and software are needed in FAA air traffic control facilities and airports. Decisions on enabling the use of new take-off, landing and in-flight navigation procedures then have to be made on a user-by-user, location-by-location basis.

Difference in flight paths of planes approaching Houston airport.

Still, “we are delivering NextGen on time and on target,” Huerta told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation.

Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III disagreed. He cited an FAA internal study that concluded that completion of the NextGen program could be 10 years late and cost two to three times the initial $40 billion price estimate.

He said the problems are the result of inadequate planning, slow decision making and a change-averse FAA culture. And there also is what one congresswoman called “the elephant in the room”: funding.

“We don’t believe funding has been an issue” for the NextGen program to date, Scovel said. But that could change with sequestration and a House Transportation budget for fiscal 2014 that cuts NextGen spending for the first time.

Scovel urged the committee to “hold FAA’s feet to the fire,” to produce more near-term benefits that could encourage airlines to more swiftly adopt NextGen technology.