Geico266
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Congress passed a $63 billion bill to fund and extend the FAA’s programs through 2015, reports ABC News. For the past four years, the FAA has been surviving on life support. Some 23 stopgap measures have funded the administration’s core services, but modernization programs were largely suspended and left hostage to uncertainty.
Currently, most commercial aircraft rely on radio-based navigation for making a landing. That technology hasn’t changed much since World War II. Now that’s changing. Part of the $63 billion will be devoted to the FAA’s switch to “NextGen,” a satellite-based navigation system.
According to the FAA, a satellite-based system would dramatically reduce delays and congestion by streamlining landings and departures. Under the bill, 35 of the country’s busiest airports have until June 2015 to modernize approaches so pilots can land with GPS. (Airplanes have used GPS before, but not for approaches or takeoffs.)
NextGen will allow more precise and better organized approaches, the agency says. That should translate into quicker travel times with fewer delays and diversions. Planes will use less fuel and make less noise on so-called “continuous descent” arrivals, lessening the notoriously “dirty” aviation industry’s environmental footprint. In a continuous descent arrival, aircraft can land safely with less engine power than they use with today’s “step-down” approaches, where aircraft land in segmented stages.
http://mashable.com/2012/02/07/faa-gps/
Currently, most commercial aircraft rely on radio-based navigation for making a landing. That technology hasn’t changed much since World War II. Now that’s changing. Part of the $63 billion will be devoted to the FAA’s switch to “NextGen,” a satellite-based navigation system.
According to the FAA, a satellite-based system would dramatically reduce delays and congestion by streamlining landings and departures. Under the bill, 35 of the country’s busiest airports have until June 2015 to modernize approaches so pilots can land with GPS. (Airplanes have used GPS before, but not for approaches or takeoffs.)
NextGen will allow more precise and better organized approaches, the agency says. That should translate into quicker travel times with fewer delays and diversions. Planes will use less fuel and make less noise on so-called “continuous descent” arrivals, lessening the notoriously “dirty” aviation industry’s environmental footprint. In a continuous descent arrival, aircraft can land safely with less engine power than they use with today’s “step-down” approaches, where aircraft land in segmented stages.
http://mashable.com/2012/02/07/faa-gps/
