BENEFITS ANALYSIS OF AN AIR TRAFFIC FLOW MANAGEMENT CAPABILITY

Air Traffic Management in the U.S. can logically be divided into two major components: (1) air traffic control (ATC) ensures pairwise separation of proximate aircraft, and (2) traffic flow management (TFM) seeks a general balance between demand and capacity for airspace and airport resources. A set of new capabilities for TFM is in the process of being developed, for deployment in the 2009-2014 timeframe. In this paper, we describe an analysis of the benefits of one capability – a capability called Automated Airborne Congestion Resolution (AACR). AACR is a capability that allows TFM staff to model, and then implement, alternatives for flight rerouting and take-off time delays when there are airspace constraints, i.e., reduced airspace sector capacity, typically because of severe weather. Our benefits analysis compares today’s approach with the proposed 2015 approach in which AACR provides automation support to augment and enhance human decision-making. Today’s approach is mostly manual – TFM staff plan and coordinate alternate routing as possible under conditions of the disorder and pressure-to-act associated with severe weather impacting airspace. The future approach relies more on a computed solution – AACR generates 1 DeArmon/Stalnaker Katkin/McKinney scores of reroutes, each with a spectrum of plausible take-off delays. The AACR approach can exploit scarce airspace resources when they are at a premium. In the paper, we present a comparative analysis of the current vs. future scenarios, with quantitative results