James Crites is the Executive Vice President for Operations at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Jim has been a key leader and collaborator in the joint FAA-aviation community effort to implement the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen. NextGen is a comprehensive overhaul of our National Airspace System (NAS) to make air travel more dependable and environmentally friendly, while ensuring flights are as safe, secure and convenient as possible. In his role at DFW, Jim has become an early adopter of core technologies such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, the NextGen successor to radar; and the Airport Surface Detection Equipment–Model X, a surface surveillance system that combines with data distribution units to enable the data sharing which fuels the NextGen collaborative decision making concept.