In an article for the Air Traffic Control Association’s (ATCA) November 2016 ATCA Bulletin, Tetra Tech’s Jeff Williams and Leo Eldredge partnered with Deborah Lawrence from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to describe the strategy for the FAA’s transition of the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) to performance based navigation (PBN), enabled by GPS. This article explains how the FAA will provide a resilient navigation infrastructure for NAS—ultimately enabling the transition to PBN.

As air traffic is predicted to increase, changes are needed to the NAS to prevent unnecessary delays and system gridlocks. Jeff, Leo, and Deborah discussed how the FAA is transitioning the NAS to PBN to help meet anticipated airspace challenges. They also addressed mitigating vulnerabilities to provide a robust and resilient navigation infrastructure to support PBN. The strategy includes a layered approach that will allow aircraft to continue operating even during satellite system disruptions.

Learn more about the expansion of PBN in the NAS and read the whole article here.