Air traffic has doubled every 15 years since the 1970s, and is forecast to again double over the next 15 years to reach more than 12-trillion RPKs by 2031. This means, according to a forecast by aircraft manufacturer Airbus, that there will be demand for 28 000 new aircraft by 2031. (A revenue passenger-kilometre – RPK – is when a revenue-generating passenger is carried one kilometre. This excludes passengers travelling under fares available only to airline staff and children who do not occupy a seat of their own.)

The trends in building these thousands of new aircraft will see manufacturers increase operating speeds and range, as well as aircraft size, while fuel burn, drag, noise and emissions are all reduced, says US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airport pavement research and development section manager Jeff Gagnon.

All of these factors – the increase in the number of aircraft, as well as the jump in air traffic – also place increasing pressure on airport infrastructure.

However, says Gagnon, the US has a plan to deal with all of these changes in the form of the NextGen programme.

NextGen is the transformation of how airplanes traverse the sky, he explains.

“It affects all of us: from the pilots that fly the planes, the passengers, to the controllers who ensure the safety. The thousands of planes overhead right now are flying indirect routes over radar towers. For close to six decades we have used this World War II era technology to transit the skies. NextGen is an upgrade to satellite-based technology. Piece by piece we are installing this new system.”

Under the NextGen system, satellite navigation will let pilots know the precise locations of other airplanes around them. This will allow more planes in the sky, while enhancing the safety of travel.

Satellite landing procedures will let pilots arrive at airports more predictably and more efficiently, says Gagnon. And, once on the ground, satellite monitoring of airplanes can push planes to the gate faster.

“By the year 2018, [the] FAA is expecting to see savings of hundreds of dollars per flight. What is NextGen? A new era of flight.”

It is expected that NextGen will provide $38-billion in benefits, with a 16-million-ton saving in carbon dioxide emissions, a 41% reduction in delays and a 1.6-billion-gallon reduction in fuel use through to 2020.

However, the programme will not be without its challenges, says Gagnon. There will be more aircraft landing at the airports, and they will be heavier and larger. More aircraft poses a challenge to civil engineers designing terminals and pavements, as well as to airport operators forced to handle increasing passenger volumes.

As part of coping with the changes in the air-traffic environment, the FAA in 2012 started a $129-million, ten-year research and development programme in airport pavement.

One of the main research areas is to extend the design life of pavements at large hub airports from 20 years to 40 years.

“Current design cannot be reasonably extended beyond 20 years,” notes Gagnon.

In turn, an airport safety research and development programme will, up to 2022, focus on several new demands placed on airports, such as the fact that some “firefighting foams do not put out biofuel fires as they should”.

The increased use of composites versus metal in aircraft manufacturing also now requires different firefighting techniques.

Gagnon says the programme will also consider heating runways to ensure planes can land safely in snow and ice conditions.

* Jeff Gagnon spoke at the Southern African Transport Conference, held in Pretoria earlier in July.