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Operate from Essentially Anywhere, Anytime

A substantial expansion of the locations and operational conditions under which vehicles can access the National Airspace System, including expanded use of the nation’s existing uncontrolled aerodromes and flexible creation of new temporary and permanent aerodromes with minimal required permanent infrastructure, and support for low-visibility and high demand operations.

Attributes

  • Enable aviation to serve the communities where people live and work
  • Provides flexibility to set up temporary aerodromes to support short-term demand and special operations
  • Enables new cost-effective aerodromes to service locations traditionally serviced by ground transportation
  • Enables new cost-effective aerodromes to service locations traditionally serviced by ground transportation
  • Unlocks capacity at thousands of existing aerodromes, unmatched since the advent of GPS approaches
  • Equitably manages vertiport constraints, which are communicated to operators
  • Flexibly handles high demand using services that coordinate with neighboring aerodromes
  • Enables operations in VMC and IMC by providing information on local atmospheric conditions and surrounding air traffic
  • Robust to off-nominal situations by providing real-time information on closures or capacity reductions and facilitating vehicle diversions, lost link operations, and emergencies
  • Interoperability with evolving vehicle and ground infrastructure designs to continue expanding airspace access.

Sub Capabilities

Help us identify sub-capabilities or related capabilities by providing input below.

Automated demand and capacity prediction and management
Sequencing, merging, and spacing with other vehicles
Real-time awareness of surrounding traffic when taking off and landing
Real-time monitoring to identify runway or vertipad hazards
Prediction and monitoring of local atmospheric conditions
Automated takeoff and landing with abort/go-around decision making
Surface management that is aware of constraints such as the number of landing pads and charging/refueling infrastructure

Research Questions

Help us identify research questions to guide further exploration.

What infrastructure is required to enable airspace access at both ad-hoc and aerodrome locations?
How do new vehicle and ground infrastructure designs interoperate with future expansion of airspace access?

Barriers

Help us identify barriers to describe obstacles we will need to address.

We need your input.