NASA Administrator Visits North Texas Air Traffic Management Facilities, Discusses NextGen Development

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Sep 17, 2014, 01:49 ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA and aviation partners of the agency's North Texas Research Station (NTX) facility will host a media availability with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at 11:15 a.m. CDT Friday, Sept. 19, in Fort Worth, Texas. The event will highlight new and cutting-edge NASA aeronautics technologies being evaluated to improve air travel across the country.

Reporters are invited to speak with Bolden, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials, NASA engineers, American Airlines executives and representatives of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. These officials will discuss the NASA/FAA NTX facility, air traffic management technology tools currently being tested and NASA/FAA collaborations in airline and airport operations. The event will be held at the American Airlines (AA) Integrated Operations Center (IOC).

The AA IOC is located at 4601 Hwy 360 S, Fort Worth. It is a controlled access facility. For press credentials, reporters must RSVP to both Jonas Dino at [email protected] and Andrea Huguely at [email protected] by 9 a.m. Sept. 19. Reporters must present press credentials at the guard gate to gain access. After entering the parking lot, attendees should continue to the right and park in front of the AA Flight Academy. The building faces Hwy 360.

The media event will highlight two NASA-developed technologies currently being evaluated at NTX:

-- The Precision Departure Release Capability (PDRC), which helps tower and en-route air traffic managers merge departing flights into busy traffic flows. Field evaluations at NTX showed that PDRC could improve takeoff time predictability by 43 percent over baseline measures.

-- The Dynamic Weather Routing (DWR) tool, which helps airline flight dispatchers identify opportunities for more efficient routes around bad weather, such as thunderstorms, which are the leading cause of delays in the national airspace system.

For nearly 20 years, the NTX has served as a field laboratory to enhance the development, evaluation and transition of advanced concepts and technologies for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). Developed and managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, engineers at NTX work closely with the FAA, air carriers and airport operational facilities to develop and evaluate NextGen concepts and technologies to help ensure safe and efficient flight operations today and into the future.

For more information about NASA Aeronautics, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/aero

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SOURCE NASA