NextGen technologies for mid-term and far-term air traffic control operations

This paper describes technologies for mid-term and far-term air traffic control operations in the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The technologies were developed and evaluated with human-in-the-loop simulations in the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) at the NASA Ames Research Center. The simulations were funded by several research focus areas within NASA's Airspace Systems program and some were co-funded by the FAA's Air Traffic Organization for Planning, Research and Technology. Results indicate that advanced trajectory-based air traffic control automation at the controller workstation integrated with data com and moderate flight deck upgrades shows great promise to increase airspace capacity significantly in the mid-term and far-term.