Examining the Actors and Functions of an Airline Operations Center

Abstract

The operation and safety of the National Airspace System (NAS) is reliant on a multitude of actors and systems, which includes the members of the Airline Operation Center (AOC), whose primary job is to ensure flight safety (Sheremeta & Weitzel, 2005). The FAA’s NextGen will constitute many changes within the NAS, and the effects of these changes need to be examined in respect to the AOC. However, before these changes can be examined in detail, it is necessary to have a baseline understanding of the current operations and actors of an AOC. In this study, AOC actors that are critical to the day-to-day operation of an AOC were identified and a functional allocation was performed. Using this research as a baseline, further research should be conducted to examine how those AOC actors and their functions will change with the implementation of NextGen.

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