Assessing the extent of avionics changes needed to achieve nextgen”s air traffic management operational improvements

This paper evaluates the significance of required changes to aircraft avionics to accomplish NextGen, the difficulty in making these changes (which translates into time frame and dollar investments) and how many aircraft components will need to be changed. This paper only addresses avionics and doesn´t address other airframe changes needed to achieve NextGen. The paper concludes with some implications for an avionics evolution strategy. There is a large number of operational improvements that can be achieved without any or limited avionics upgrades, and there is a large number that will require upgrades that are relatively costly and where the development of the avionics and the standards are not initiated. Furthermore, in most cases, significant research is needed to complete the requirements for these operational improvements before the standards can be developed.