AI/CIE Benefits

The Airborne Internet / Collaborative Information Environment will have the following benefits:

Increase productivity and economic growth

• The use of commercial Internet protocols and services will improve situational awareness, which will make aircraft easier to fly and reduce pilot workload
• The growth in connectivity will enable higher-volume aircraft operations and allow people in transit (i.e., passengers) to use otherwise unproductive time
• Communication and transportation mobility will increase, creating new markets and causing established markets to expand at accelerated rates—which will increase investments in economic development and create jobs

Lower cost

• Flight deck functions in the aircraft will be consolidated and the number of required radios will be reduced, which will save aircraft owners money in addition to weight and space
• Most communication will occur in a peer-to-peer fashion between aircraft, which will reduce the amount of expensive ground infrastructure (such as antennas) the FAA needs to build and maintain
• Many people are already familiar with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Internet technologies, which will reduce the amount of time and money required to create and manage the Airborne Internet

Increase security, reliability, and scalability

• The use of XML Web Service protocols will make the Collaborative Information Environment (CIE) secure and reliable, unlike many current aviation communication methods
• The Airborne Internet will retain the resilience of the commercial Internet, which will allow it to scale to events such as extraordinary traffic volume, disruptive weather, or exponentional increases in user volume

Reduce risk

• Many stakeholders will share the costs of creating and maintaining the Airborne Internet, which will reduce the possibility of one organization dominating or abruptly terminating the data channel

Increase innovation

• The use of open standards will allow companies to focus on building better radios, applications, and services instead of competing on basic communication protocols

Increase flexibility

• The Airborne Internet will be datalink and device-independent, which will allow aircraft operators to select equipment based on their available resources and needs
• The use of commercial Internet technology will allow the Airborne Internet and the Collaborative Information Environment to be interoperable with entire transportation system and the rest of the world