NASA’s researchers know that when you settle into your seat on a commercial flight, you expect a smooth takeoff, views over the clouds, a steady descent, and hopefully an early arrival at your destination. Your experience goes from smooth to anxiety-inducing as you worry about making your connection or getting home in time for dinner.
Large airports are among the busiest environments in aviation, with aircraft, ground crews, and service vehicles sharing crowded taxiways. Researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley recently worked with Boeing to advance three types of field tests that could lead to safer, more efficient runway environments at airports.
The system reduced pilot and air traffic controller workloads and the risk of verbal errors.
Together, these NASA capabilities aim to reduce miscommunication, ease pilot workloads, and keep airport traffic moving smoothly. Future testing will integrate the sensor and digital taxi systems into a simulated air traffic control environment to evaluate how the technologies can benefit overall management of the airspace.
For years, NASA has worked to improve your experience when flying by developing new technologies to modernize the commercial airline system.
“Aviation safety is key to NASA’s research,” said Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety project.
In a 2025 collaborative effort with Boeing, United Airlines, and international partners, NASA evaluated real‑time trajectory sharing on domestic and transoceanic flights.
During that testing, a United Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft shared frequent flight information with airline operations centers and air traffic control.
NASA has now transferred the routing technology to the Federal Aviation Administration and airlines will continue to test it.