Modernization Needed on Multiple Fronts in Commercial Aviation

The first session of the NAE regional meeting held at Duke University focused on the growing complexity of modern airspace. On the morning of May 20, two keynote talks, three shorter talks and a concluding group discussion touched on a common thread: Aviation’s biggest challenges are complex, multi-faceted and span many categories.

Al Romig, executive officer of NAE, gave a broad look at the organization’s long history in aerospace, from advising the federal government on early military and civil aviation questions to helping shape major space science priorities.

Romig traced the national academies’ involvement from 19th-century technical challenges through World War II, the rise of jet propulsion, nuclear submarines, GPS and major NASA missions. He argued that the academies’ enduring role has been to provide independent technical guidance when the nation is making consequential choices about infrastructure, investment and innovation.

“The mission is to help ensure the long-term welfare of the nation by providing independent, objective advice on matters involving engineering and technology,” Romig said.

Captain Jim Graham, senior vice president of Delta Connection and former CEO of Endeavor Air, delivered the session’s second keynote and offered an industry perspective on why modernizing air traffic systems has become increasingly urgent.

Graham noted the American airspace system is under mounting strain from congestion, aging infrastructure and staffing deficits.

“Is our national airspace system safe? The answer is absolutely,” Graham said. “Now, is it the most efficient? Is it the most reliable? I don’t know that it is.”

Given the tens of thousands of flights that the Federal Aviation Administration directs per day, Graham argued that modernization can no longer mean piecemeal improvements. Instead, the system needs broad, wholesale upgrades to communications, radar, facilities, staffing pipelines and traffic management tools. He called for a more flexible and integrated airspace system given the growing number of categories of aircraft that want a piece of the skies, including drones, urban air taxis and commercial space rockets.

“The future is now,” Graham said. “We want to make flying as uneventful as possible and make sure that we get you there when you need to get there and have a good experience.”

The session then included lightning talks by Alan Epstein, the R.C. Maclaurin Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Michael Guterres, portfolio leader at MITRE’s Center for Integrated Transportation, and Pascal Joly, senior director of engineer and operations safety at Airbus. Epstein spoke of efforts to reduce noise in airplanes, Guterres spoke about the rapid growth of advanced air mobility, including drones and eVTOL (electrical vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, and Joly argued that better data-sharing between aircraft and air traffic controllers could improve efficiency.

All session speakers, along with Gabriel Katul, the George Pearsall Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke, then came together for a panel discussion moderated by Alec Gallimore, provost of Duke University and an aerospace engineer. They discussed the role AI could play in redesigning and managing airspace, the need for a more unified and less fragmented control system, and the balance of automation and human oversight.

“We need to embrace what’s going on outside of aviation with automation while keeping a sharp eye to the fact that, in aviation, technology is only half of the answer,” Guterres said. “The other half is trust.”