You heard this morning on The Federal Drive that the Federal Aviation Administration’s rollout of a new air traffic control system has added a new city. Controllers in the Philadelphia area now have the capability to use the satellite-based system to track and separate aircraft. They join controllers in Houston; Louisville, Kentucky; and Juneau, Alaska. The new system is called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, which the FAA calls a core component of its NextGen system.

But the NextGen system overall has had its share of problems, both operationally and managerially. Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller joined me to review them, as a preview of the issues the House Transportation aviation subcommittee was interested in last week at a hearing on NextGen.

The subcommittee wanted “to explore how the near- and mid-term targets of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) are being reconciled with long-term goals and how the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) is leveraging, or plans to leverage, its agency partners’ resources to achieve these goals,” according to subcommittee staff.

I played highlights of the hearing, including the testimony of Dr. Karlin Toner of the Joint Planning and Development Office at the FAA; Dr. Gerald Dillingham, Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues at the GAO; and Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel. You can watch the entire hearing in the video player below.

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