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This paper describes the recently established Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative (CAAFI), including its goals and objectives, as well as presents an alternate fuel roadmap that was originally generated by industry and refined by the CAAFI stakeholders. CAAFI is designed to coordinate the development and commercialization of “drop-in” alternate fuels (i.e. fuels that can directly supplement or replace crude oil derived jet fuels), as well as exploring the long-term potential of other fuel options. The ultimate goal is to ensure an affordable and stable supply of environmentally progressive aviation fuels that will enable continued growth of commercial aviation. This initiative is organized into four sub-groups: Research and Development (R&D), certification, environment, and economics & business. The R&D group seeks to identify promising new drop-in alternate fuels, and to foster coordination of development efforts.

Area navigation offers a means of establishing an air route system without the constraints entailed in flying toward or away from the signal source. In terminal areas, an area navigation system of routes, combined with ATC computer-aided sequencing and airborne collision-avoidance technology, offers possibilities for establishing future methods of moving high volumes of traffic on and off a complex of multiple parallel runways. Such a system would reduce air-ground communications and controller workloads which are serious limiting factors in today's system. In the en route system, the use of area navigation will result in more efficient utilization of airspace, although regimentation of traffic will continue to be necessary in areas of high traffic density. An area navigation system, based on VOR/DME inputs is possible in the near future.