Abstract
This paper summarizes several years of Traffic Flow Management (TFM) R&D work. The MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) has been engaged in a longterm research program to define and refine decision support concepts and capabilities for TFM, the branch of Air Traffic Management that manages the strategic aspect of air traffic by balancing airspace capacity with demand, especially during severe weather or heavy traffic. This paper describes CAASD's work on the concept of Collaborative Routing, in which all affected parties — Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and aircraft operators - can share in realtime a common picture of TFM problems and potential solutions. The Collaborative Routing Coordination Tools (CRCT) refers to a set of functionalities that support Collaborative Routing, and also to a software platform developed and used by CAASD to conduct the R&D. In this paper, the Collaborative Routing concept is described, and sample user interfaces supporting the concept are presented. Evaluations with operational personnel are described at a high level. Capabilities developed and refined via this work include the FCA (Flow Constrained Area), and the reroute modeling capability. These functions allow the user to evaluate the impact of a rerouting solution to controllers and airspace users (airlines and other pilots), before implementing that solution. Finally, ongoing research on future TFM decision support capabilities is described.
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