The NextGen Weather Concept of Use (ConUse) is an extension of the NextGen Concept of Operations and provides a high-level overview of how operators will use weather information in NextGen operations. The ConUse lays out principles from a user's perspective of how improved weather services will minimize weather impact on the numerous decisions made by those that operate airlines, manage the nation's air traffic control system, manage airport operations, or fly in classic airspace. Beginning with descriptions of the types of aviation-related decisions that require weather information, the ConUse supports the need for significant changes in the ways weather information is structured, distributed and used. It describes those changes from the perspective of the following general user categories: Flight Operation Centers (FOCs), Pilots, Air Navigation Service Providers, Airport Operations.

Several scenarios are provided to illustrate weather uses from the perspective of the FOCs, the ANSPs, and a private pilot equipped with high-end avionics on a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight.

The ability to mitigate weather impacts in trajectory-based airspace through the use of new types of weather information (e.g., high resolution, high update rate, and probabilistic) by NAS users is summarized. The impact on NAS operations of new weather information is stated in terms of the improved weather services needed to allow the users and managers of high-performance airspace to integrate weather information into their decisions to significantly improve the capacity of the NAS. Also provided are the impacts that probabilistic weather forecasts will have on current regulations.