NextGen air traffic management technology will be less transformational than originally promised, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Under Section 502 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, the OIG was tasked with reporting on the FAA’s progress in implementing the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), which is a massive investment in modernizing the aging U.S. air traffic system.
According to the OIG report, the FAA claimed in its Section 502 NextGen report that “all major NextGen systems will be in place by 2025.” However, the OIG noted, that full deployment will take longer because the “FAA plans to deploy each major system to at least one location by 2025.” According to OIG's analysis and other stakeholder reports, the NextGen infrastructure will be less transformational than originally promised.
The FAA 502 report projected $100 billion in benefits by 2030 “even though [the] FAA had previously acknowledged that this amount was not achievable within that timeframe," concluded the report. “In addition, [the] FAA reported that the agency remains committed to working with industry on NextGen programs, but industry representatives stated that transparency and collaboration with the agency declined starting in 2018.”
The OIG report acknowledged that the FAA has closed all but three of the more than 200 recommendations the Department of Transportation made between 2005 through 2022.