Unpacking the BNATCS Story

Air transportation is an invaluable part of our lives. The National Airspace System (NAS), however, desperately needs an overhaul. 

Our NAS connects businesses and families domestically and around the globe, enables tourism and cultural exchange, provides an agile and high-speed distribution network for shipping and trade, and supports life-saving and law enforcement efforts that benefit our entire society. It is an economic engine that drives roughly $1.5 trillion of GDP and supports millions of jobs worldwide. Thanks to thousands of dedicated, passionate, and highly capable professionals, the NAS safely transports about three million passengers and 61,000 tons of cargo and goods across the United States every day.

The Brand New Air Traffic Control System (BNATCS) initiative, a Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) modernization plan, launched last year represents an unprecedented effort of government and industry to modernize the system and transform operations. It recognizes that,

• The systems and technologies we depend upon are outdated and too costly to maintain.
• New capabilities built on modern architectures will bring greater reliability and resilience, increased capacity and efficiency, and critical improvements in safety and security.
• Traditional processes used to develop, test, and deploy new capabilities must give way to a more agile, expeditious, and user-centric focus.

BNATCS will satisfy not only an immediate need to replace antiquated equipment, networks, and automation, but will enable and promote a generational shift in how air traffic management is conducted.

BNATCS is also about opportunity – opportunity for our members to develop new solutions, build new capabilities, and be a part of this modernization and transformation effort.

ATCA believes that it is imperative to keep our membership aware and informed of the BNATCS fundamentals and vision. We have begun a series of “BNATCS Unpacked” features within the new The ATCA Brief: Above the Noise newsletters that highlight the component parts of the program and offer insights from experts. The BNATCS program is organized around these workstreams with intended operational outcomes:

Communications. Outdated, costly analog networks, voice switches, and radios will be replaced with robust, high-speed digital and wireless IP-based infrastructure that is more adaptable, resilient, reliable, and secure.

Surveillance. Aging, costly radar systems with frequent outages and limited surface-movement awareness will be replaced by modern technology, improving reliability, lowering costs, and reducing runway incursions and other surface incidents.

Alaska Operations. General Aviation, vital to Alaska’s economy and lifestyle, will benefit from modernized flight services, weather sensors, satellite communications, and camera feeds, giving pilots the situational awareness needed in one of the world’s most challenging aviation environments.

Facilities. Many air traffic facilities are failing and past end-of-life, plagued by faulty HVAC, pest infestations, leaky roofs, and asbestos hazards. BNATCS will fund new towers, consolidated en route centers, and purpose-built facilities to serve the NAS for decades.

Automation. Siloed systems supporting terminal, en route, and oceanic operations will be unified on a single virtual platform, delivering standardization, flexibility, and interoperability. As the integrating layer tying all workstreams together, it will build more accurate trajectories, strengthen surveillance processing, better align resources with traffic demands, and apply artificial intelligence to improve decision-making.

Remote Towers & Training. Digital and remote towers, paired with advanced simulation tools, will enable greater operational flexibility, faster controller proficiency, and improved safety and efficiency at lower cost to service providers.

A modernized, higher-performing, lower-cost infrastructure is at the core of BNATCS’s.

The NAS cannot sustain its current state or support growing demand. A modernized infrastructure lets us serve rising demand from commercial space, eVTOL, UAS, and supersonic operations without shortchanging traditional commercial, business, and general aviation.

• We can gain capacity, efficiency, and schedule integrity through trajectory-based operations.
• We can adjust airspace volumes more dynamically to match shifting traffic and complexity.
• We can use AI and analytics to reduce convective weather’s impact on major traffic flows.

Our imperative is not only to upgrade NAS technologies but to use them to fundamentally transform operations. We believe our members are fully prepared to do both and we appreciate the opportunity to provide further details and insights in the coming weeks and months. If your company has good news to share about its contribution to progress on any of these workstreams, please reach out to Bridget Dongu to be considered for a future ATCA Brief “BNATCS Unpacked” feature.