Air Traffic and NextGen Technologies Generate Interest
By Ginger Cairnes
Those outside of government and aviation circles are also interested in the NextGen Air Transportation System. Recently a group of students from Villanova University enrolled in the Business Executive MBA program’s Designing Business Systems Architecture course contacted the visitor program to arrange a tour of the Technical Center.
They chose the United States Air Transportation System as a platform for the program’s “thinking capstone project.” The group was particularly interested in information that would provide them with a better understanding of the elements of the NextGen Air Transportation System.
Prior to visiting the Technical Center they visited the Command Center and the Potomac TRACON. Their research and trips over the past six months provided them with a good grasp of the subject matter and topics relevant to their project. Currently in the solutions phase they are expected to use systems thinking methodology to propose a new design of the system.
Their visit here reacquainted them with some of the subject matter from the Command Center and Potomac TRACON and also helped them to better understand some of the development process, including challenges and the status of new designs of the air traffic system.
An email received from the group expressed the following: “We would like to express our sincere gratitude to you for the time and care you dedicated to our tour of the William J. Hughes Technical Center. We particularly appreciate you taking the time to understand our needs and designing an agenda that was extremely relevant to our research. We were amazed by the generosity of all of the folks with whom we met at the Technical Center with their time and information. I have never met such a great group of people across the board that are all clearly excited to be a part of the mission of the Technical Center.”
This certainly speaks well of how Center employees are carrying out the FAA mission into the NextGen.
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