NextGen: A new way to fly commercial aircraft by 2025

NextGen is an umbrella term for the ongoing transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS). At its most basic level, NextGen represents an evolution from a ground-based system of air traffic control to a satellite-based system of air traffic management. This evolution is vital to meeting future demand, and to avoiding gridlock in the sky and at our nation’s airports.

NextGen will open America’s skies to continued growth and increased safety while reducing aviation’s environmental impact. We will realize these goals through the development of aviation-specific applications for existing, widely-used technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and technological innovation in areas such as weather forecasting, data networking and digital communications. Hand-in-hand with state-of-the-art technology will be new airport infrastructure and new procedures, including the shift of certain decision-making responsibility from the ground to the cockpit.

NextGen will reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. Flying will be quieter, cleaner and more fuel-efficient. We’ll use alternative fuels, new equipment and operational procedures, lessening our impact on the climate. More precise flight paths help us limit the amount of noise that communities experience. (They are going to allow planes to cut off their engines and coast for hundreds of miles to save fuel, now that's interesting.)

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They do that today. In the olden timey days air traffic controllers would ask for descent rates that would require air brakes to achieve. And energy dissipated by air brakes is energy wasted. Nowadays they are allowing slower descent rates, allowing pilots to just throttle back during the descent.

To see if your aircraft is doing this, look out the window during the initial descent. If you see the air brakes/spoilers deployed (flat plates on top of the wings that tilt upwards) they're not doing this.

BTW no one actually will "cut off" their engines; that's a very big safety and maintenance issue. But they will throttle them back significantly.

 

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I'm kind of fascinated at how flying dynamics change at large scale such that large planes can move quite slowly and stay airborne.

 

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That's not only interesting it's not possible.
Unless they're going to introduce new aircraft with significantly higher aspect ratios (and at the same time rebuild every single airport and runway to handle those new aircraft).
While an airliner does have a glide ratio better than a brick, and better than many combat aircraft, "hundreds of miles" with engines cut off isn't feasible.

 

Huh?
What makes you think that flying dynamics "change at large scale"?

And for reference most airliners are designed to have optimum flying characteristics at cruise speed.
Low-speed flight depends on wing loading (and, to an extent, span loading) and lift coefficient, among other things.

 

Because my member can seemingly float through the air with grace, despite being so large.

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Also, I thought I read about areal bugs needing to move their wings very fast to stay in the air. Otherwise, any areal bug I can think of flaps its wings really fast, whereas the only bird I know of doing so is the hummingbird. Then, there's seeing airliners occasionally moving so slow through the air that I intuitively think it should fall down. I couldn't find anything via Google about the weight subject, so have I inferred wrong?

 

I thought stall speed on most airliners was something like 150-200 mph in level flight.

They just look a lot slower.

I got a flight out of...oh, I think it's JFK ? in NYC a while ago.
The runway there is both short and right by the terminal...as opposed to out in an empty field.
Takeoff at JFK really makes you realize you are not gently lofting into the air, but getting hurled forward faster than a drag racing car... at a really ludicrous amount of speed.

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It's really a disturbing sort of feeling as the huge terminal building goes by in a blink and you're slammed into your seat.