Unlike the highway traffic engineering subdiscipline of civil engineering, the field of air transportation systems engineering is just emerging. Several good books are available on aircraft avionics, but they do not relate well to the overall air traffic management system. Other books on air traffic control do not discuss air traffic management or the new aspects of central flow control or collaborative decision making.

The Next Generation Air Transportation System's (NextGen) goal is the transformation of the U.S. national airspace system through programs and initiatives that could make it possible to shorten routes, navigate better around weather, save time and fuel, reduce delays, and improve capabilities for monitoring and managing of aircraft. A Review of the Next Generation Air Transportation provides an overview of NextGen and examines the technical activities, including human-system design and testing, organizational design, and other safety and human factor aspects of the system, that will be necessary to successfully transition current and planned modernization programs to the future system. This report assesses technical, cost, and schedule risk for the software development that will be necessary to achieve the expected benefits from a highly automated air traffic management system and the implications for ongoing modernization projects. The recommendations of this report will help the Federal Aviation Administration anticipate and respond to the challenges of implementing NextGen.

One of the primary applications of human factors engineering is in the aviation domain, and the importance of human factors has never been greater as U.S. and European authorities seek to modernize the air transportation system through the introduction of advanced automation. This handbook provides regulators, practitioners, researchers, and educators a comprehensive resource for understanding and applying human factors to air transportation.

In 2003, Congress directed the Secretary of Transportation to establish the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) Joint Planning and Development Office (JDPO) to plan the development of an air transportation system capable of meeting potential air traffic demand for 2025. All federal agencies involved in aviation participate in the JDPO providing the opportunity overcome many of the major barriers to developing an effective NGATS. To assist this process, the NRC was asked to examine the first NGATS Integrated Plan prepared by JPDO and submitted to Congress in 2004. This report provides a review of the vision and goals, the operational concepts, and the R&D roadmap developed by the plan; an analysis of the JDPO integrated product teams created to carry out the planning; and an assessment of the implementation process.

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is an effort begun in 2003 whose goals include improving the capacity, efficiency, and safety of the U.S. air transportation system and also enabling reduction in noise, pollution, and energy use. The Federal Aviation Administration and various stakeholders, including equipment providers, airlines, and contractors, are currently implementing both near-term and midterm capabilities of this effort. Interim Report of a Review of the Next Generation Air Transportation System Enterprise Architecture, Software, Safety, and Human Factors is part of a larger project to examine NextGen's enterprise architecture and related issues. This interim report provides an initial assessment focusing on challenges of system architecture for software-intensive systems.

The book addresses all major aspects to be considered for the design and operation of aircrafts within the entire transportation chain. It provides the basic information about the legal environment, which defines the basic requirements for aircraft design and aircraft operation. The interactions between airport, air traffic management and the airlines are described. The market forecast methods and the aircraft development process are explained to understand the very complex and risky business of an aircraft manufacturer. The principles of flight physics as basis for aircraft design are presented and linked to the operational and legal aspects of air transport including all environmental impacts. The book is written for graduate students as well as for engineers and experts, who are working in aerospace industry, at airports or in the domain of transport and logistics.