By Eric Pianin,
The Fiscal Times
November 19, 2014
The Next Generation Air
Transportation System – or NextGen, as it’s better known – is one of the
biggest white elephants you probably never heard of.
Formally launched a
decade ago by the Federal Aviation Administration, Next-Gen was designed
as a complex interconnected array of new technologies that vowed to
reduce flight delays and lower fuel consumption and carbon emissions
that contribute to global warming.
The estimated cost? That
would be about $40 billion through 2025, which would be shared by the
government and the airline industry – meaning higher taxpayer dollars
and increased airline ticket fees.
The Government
Accountability Office, the airline industry, lawmakers and other have
complained for years that the massive project to replace the current
radar-based air traffic control system was woefully behind schedule. On
Tuesday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a
hearing on the status of NextGen. The verdict was that the proposed new
system is a bust – stalled, broken and unlikely to materialize anytime
soon.
Committee Chair Bill
Shuster (R-PA) complained the process was broken and that the FAA was
moving at a snail’s pace. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) recalled that when he
previously asked FAA Administrator Michael Huerta and his deputies
about the project’s deadlines, he noted beads of sweat forming on their
foreheads.
And delegate Eleanor
Holmes Norton, a D.C. Democrat, said that the highly ambitious effort to
replace a 20th century radar-based system with a technologically
efficient GPS-based system was for now far out of reach. She dismissed
the 2020 date for partial implementation of NextGen as fiction, adding
that the FAA is not about to see any significant changes in the existing
system for the foreseeable future.
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com
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