NASA Ames Research Center in California is to lead a $450 million programme aimed at tripling the all-weather capacity of the US aviation system within the next decade.
NASA's new Aviation System Capacity programme will integrate three existing research programmes (into terminal-area productivity, advanced air-transportation technology and short-haul civil tilt-rotors) into a single effort. NASA says that "additional activities" will be developed to meet the goals of the programme, which also involves work by other NASA centres as well as the USFederal Aviation Administration and the aerospace industry.
"Ames will be performing the research with the FAA, which will define the nation's air-traffic-management system for the next century," says Ames Center director Dr Henry McDonald.
The terminal-area productivity programme is aimed primarily at producing technology to reduce separation minima and enable safe clear-weather capacity in non-visual weather conditions. The civil tilt-rotor programme is directed at supporting the creation of a new aircraft market which would help off-load capacity from the short-haul traffic segment.
The advanced air-transportation goal is to develop technology for integrated "block-to-block" flightpath planning, which would relieve congestion caused by the current requirement for each aircraft to remain within a discrete airspace segment. NASA believes that, by developing unrestricted flight routeing, or "free flight", the cost of air travel could be significantly reduced.
It estimates that shaving 4min from every commercial flight in the 1990s would provide additional capacity equivalent to the traffic of another major airline.
Source: Flight International
