NASA and Boeing moved the taxi clearance from a controller's voice to a cockpit display in field tests

Removing speech from a taxi clearance removes one failure mode by construction: there is no readback to mishear. The new one is that the route loaded in the aircraft has to be the route the controller intended, and on a surface where aircraft, ground crews and service vehicles share crowded taxiways ^[13], the data link shows only the traffic someone entered into it. The sensor suite covers that case ^[3].

NASA did not say how many taxi runs were flown, at which airports, or how pilot and controller workload was measured ^[10]. That determines how far the workload result generalizes: the workload sits on the crowded taxiway ^[13], and a reduction shown over a handful of runs at a quiet field is a feasibility finding.

The second half of the release reports a measurement study. In 2025, working with Boeing, United Airlines and international partners, NASA evaluated real-time trajectory sharing on domestic and transoceanic flights ^[7]. A United Airlines Boeing 737 sent frequent flight information to airline operations centers and to air traffic control, and NASA used the data to work out how often those updates should be sent and which details matter most for generating accurate arrival predictions ^[8]. The sample described is one aircraft from one airline ^[12].

That airborne work has already moved out of the lab. NASA has transferred the routing technology to the FAA, and airlines will continue to test it ^[9]. The pre-departure rerouting and digital exchange tools let dispatchers and controllers see the same digital picture of flights preparing to depart ^[14].

The surface case is argued in terms of autonomy. "Technology that can provide additional autonomy and support a future airspace with multiple aircraft operating in harmony is key to advancing the National Airspace System," said Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA's Airspace Operations and Safety project ^[11].