(NASA: Washington, D.C.) -- NASA is working toward a greener future in aviation, where airplanes push back from the gate, taxi to the runway, and take off much quicker. A more efficient, precise trip by an airplane from the gate to takeoff reduces the amount of time its jet engines spend running on the ground, reduces noise and emissions levels at the airport, and reduces the time you spend sitting and waiting to take off.

Before this future can be realized, the tools used today to manage arrivals and departures need to be upgraded. In this Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) world, computers will streamline the sharing of information between everybody involved in arrivals and departures—air traffic controllers, managers, flight crews—so that an airplane’s movements through every point of its flight are more precisely coordinated. Especially at the world’s busiest airports, sharing information between the systems used to monitor an airplane’s flight will be key for more dependable and efficient air travel.

 …