1 Preliminary Assessment of Future Operational Concepts Using the Airspace Concept Evaluation System

The Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES) is a non-real-time, computer simulation of local, regional and nationwide factors covering aircraft operations from gate departure to arrival. ACES ’ overarching objective is to provide a flexible National Airspace System (NAS) simulation and modeling environment that can assess the impact of new NAS tools, concepts, and architectures, including those that represent a significant departure from the existing NAS operational paradigm. The first release of ACES was completed in March 2003 and in May 2003 ACES ’ potential as an analysis tool was evaluated by using it to assess three future NAS operational concepts: the Advanced Airspace Concept for improved en-route airspace capacity and two notional concepts for improved terminal area capacity. This paper presents an overview of that assessment exercise and shows that ACES has great potential as an analysis tool for the evaluation of future NAS operational concepts. I