Technology Solutions

• Future efforts towards boosting the performance and capability of on-board avionics must
emphasize achieving a more integrated design between aircraft and the ground. The design
must regard the aircraft, as well as operations centers, as intelligent collaborators.

• Projects need to be driven by operational utility and short, tight schedules within the
context of a plan that can be changed as implementation leads to increased understanding.
The deployment of advanced aids that will dramatically expand controllers’ and pilots’
capabilities can – and should – proceed now.

• Some of the least successful undertakings in the field have been the result of mixing
research with implementation. We cannot afford the luxury of taking many years to make
modest improvements that should have already been made, while blocking out more
aggressive change.

• We must, instead, find alternate routes, making meaningful progress as we go while taking
advantage of current systems and developments, avoiding repeated development of the
same capability, and being aggressive in appropriate areas.

• Many of the necessary technology systems already exist. We must make a concerted effort to
bring those systems out of the lab and into production, supplanting process with progress.

• Our challenge is to accelerate collaboration among all stakeholder groups, and to

accelerate our development effort with a focus on making clear, incremental improvements
across the system, as quickly as possible.

Executive Summary 3