The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) promises great benefits and efficiencies but only if the stakeholders equip their aircraft with the technology, according to the president and CEO of ITT Corp. Steve Loranger. Loranger addressed the RTCA Symposium in Washington on Wednesday.
In order to help form the business case for operators, Loranger said ITT has entered into a cooperative agreement with NEXA Capital Partners, of Washington, D.C., to develop a funding mechanism to make avionics more affordable and to reduce the risk of NextGen equipage to system users. ITT is the prime contractor in developing and installing the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) ground infrastructure in the United States.
“Ensuring that NextGen technical capabilities deliver the benefits that are promised by their full implementation needs to be a significant focus of the community,” he said. This business case will close with the delivery of procedures that take advantage of NextGen technical capability and the development of viable options for cost effective financing of required equipage.
“Achieving the benefits of NextGen will require that users equip with avionics supporting NextGen capabilities,” he said. “On the commercial carrier front the willingness to equip will be driven by the ability to close a business case for retrofitting existing aircraft and forward-fitting aircraft that have yet to come off the production line. The ability to close the business case is in turn driven by two principal factors: these are the benefits to be derived from equipage and the cost of equipage.”