Last month, many JPDO Weather Working Group members traveled to the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Conference in Orlando, Florida to hold a NextGen Weather Public Meeting. The meeting was a tremendous success.
Steve Brown, Weather Working Group Industry Co-Chair and Mark Andrews, JPDO Assistant Director of Commerce and Weather Working Group Government Co-Chair, delivered the opening remarks. The leads of each JPDO Working Group formed a panel and presented their accomplishments for the year (to date). The meeting ended with a Q&A session between audience participants and the panel.
Acknowledging the effects to industry from the recent economic downturn, Mr. Brown opened the meeting with the call for more industry partners to participate. As the NextGen weather initiatives have moved from “weather capability planning” to implementation, this call will become more important with the need for private expertise in proof of concept demonstrations.
Mr. Andrews emphasized that while weather forecast accuracies have improved over the years, operational use and performance have not. He also underscored the cultural issues that need to be addressed with more consistent weather information. This still allows for different products but all based on the same data. Another important take-away from Mr. Andrews was that the weather community needs to show the improved value in the proactive use of weather on operations. He sees the value in strategic vice tactical applications and from a risk management focus. The demonstrations will need to support this.
Industry participants re-emphasized the desire to know what opportunities will be made available, when, and with whom. In a similar vein, some feel that there is a need to better delineate between what the government is going to do (GFI) and what industry will need to address. Timing is becoming important. There is a need to soon realize these opportunities—otherwise, there will not be enough time to do anything.
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