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NASA NTRS1998

Collaborative Arrival Planning: Data Sharing and User Preference Tools

Air traffic growth and air carrier economic pressures have motivated efforts to increase the flexibility of the air traffic management process and change the relationship between the air traffic control service provider and the system user. One of the most visible of these efforts is the U.S. government/industry "free flight" initiative, in which the service provider concentrates on safety and cross-airline fairness, and the user on their business objectives and operating preferences, including selecting their own path and speed in real-time. In the terminal arrival phase of flight, severe restrictions and rigid control are currently placed on system users, typically without regard for individual user operational preferences. Airborne delays applied to arriving aircraft into capacity constrained airports are imposed on a first-come, first-serve basis, and thus do not allow the system user to plan for or prioritize late arrivals, or to economically optimize their arrival sequence. A central tenant of the free-flight operating paradigm is collaboration between service providers and users in reaching air traffic management decisions. Such collaboration would be particularly beneficial to an airline's "hub" operation, where off-schedule arrival aircraft are a consistent problem, as they cause serious air-port ramp difficulties, rippling airline scheduling effects, and result in large economic inefficiencies. Greater collaboration can also lead to increased airport capacity and decrease the severity of over-capacity rush periods. In the NASA Collaborative Arrival Planning (CAP) project, both independent exchange of real-time data between the service provider and system user and collaborative decision support tools are addressed. Data exchange of real-time arrival scheduling, airspace management, and air carrier fleet data between the FAA service provider and an air carrier is being conducted and evaluated. Collaborative arrival decision support tools to allow intra-airline arrival preferences are being developed and simulated. The CAP project is part of and leveraged from the NASA/FAA Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS), a fielded set of decision support tools that provide computer generated advisories for both enroute and terminal area controllers to manage and control arrival traffic more efficiently. In this paper, the NASA Collaborative Arrival Planning project is outlined and recent results detailed, including the real-time use of CTAS arrival scheduling data by a major air carrier and simulations of tactical and strategic user preference decision support tools.

Zelenka, Richard E.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Design Considerations for a New Terminal Area Arrival Scheduler

Design of a terminal area arrival scheduler depends on the interrelationship between throughput, delay and controller intervention. The main contribution of this paper is an analysis of the above interdependence for several stochastic behaviors of expected system performance distributions in the aircraft s time of arrival at the meter fix and runway. Results of this analysis serve to guide the scheduler design choices for key control variables. Two types of variables are analyzed, separation buffers and terminal delay margins. The choice for these decision variables was tested using sensitivity analysis. Analysis suggests that it is best to set the separation buffer at the meter fix to its minimum and adjust the runway buffer to attain the desired system performance. Delay margin was found to have the least effect. These results help characterize the variables most influential in the scheduling operations of terminal area arrivals.

Thipphavong, Jane↗

NASA NTRS2015

Methodology to Define Delivery Accuracy Under Current Day ATC Operations

In order to enable arrival management concepts and solutions in a NextGen environment, ground- based sequencing and scheduling functions have been developed to support metering operations in the National Airspace System. These sequencing and scheduling algorithms as well as tools are designed to aid air traffic controllers in developing an overall arrival strategy. The ground systems being developed will support the management of aircraft to their Scheduled Times of Arrival (STAs) at flow-constrained meter points. This paper presents a methodology for determining the undelayed delivery accuracy for current day air traffic control operations. This new method analyzes the undelayed delivery accuracy at meter points in order to understand changes of desired flow rates as well as enabling definition of metrics that will allow near-future ground automation tools to successfully achieve desired separation at the meter points. This enables aircraft to meet their STAs while performing high precision arrivals. The research presents a possible implementation that would allow delivery performance of current tools to be estimated and delivery accuracy requirements for future tools to be defined, which allows analysis of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) accuracy for Time-Based Flow Management (TBFM) and the FAA's Traffic Management Advisor (TMA). TMA is a deployed system that generates scheduled time-of-arrival constraints for en- route air traffic controllers in the US. This new method of automated analysis provides a repeatable evaluation of the delay metrics for current day traffic, new releases of TMA, implementation of different tools, and across different airspace environments. This method utilizes a wide set of data from the Operational TMA-TBFM Repository (OTTR) system, which processes raw data collected by the FAA from operational TMA systems at all ARTCCs in the nation. The OTTR system generates daily reports concerning ATC status, intent and actions. Due to its availability, ease of use, and vast collection of data across several airspaces it was determined that the OTTR data set would be the best method to utilize moving forward with this analysis. The particular variables needed for further analysis were determined along with the necessary OTTR reports, by working closely with the repository team additional analysis reports were developed that provided key ETA and STA information at the freeze horizon. One major benefit of the OTTR data is that using the correct reports the data across several airports could be analyzed over large periods of time. The OTTR data processes the TBFM data daily and is stored in various formats across several airspaces. This allowed us to develop our own parsing methods and raw data processing that would not rely on other computationally expensive tools that perform more in depth analysis of similar sets of data. The majority of this work consisted of the development of the ability to filter flights to create a subset of flights that could be considered undelayed, which is defined as a flight at the freeze horizon with an ETA and STA difference that was minimal or close to zero. This was a broad method that allowed the consideration of a large data set which consisted of all the traffic across a two month period in 2013, the hottest and coldest months, arriving into four airports: George Bush Intercontinental, Denver International, Los Angeles International, and Phoenix Sky Harbor.

delivery accuracy↗

NASA NTRS2019

Airspace Technology Demonstration 3 (ATD-3): Dynamic Routes for Arrivals in Weather (DRAW) Technology Transfer Document Summary Version 2.0

Airspace Technology Demonstration – 3 (ATD-3) is part of NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP) – specifically, its Airspace Technology Demonstrations (ATD) Project. ATD-3 is a multi-year research and development effort which proposes to develop and demonstrate automation technologies and operating concepts that enable air navigation service providers and airspace users to continuously assess weather, winds, traffic, and other information to identify, evaluate, and implement workable opportunities for flight plan route corrections that can result in significant flight time and fuel savings in en route airspace. In order to ensure that the products of this tech-transfer are relevant and useful, NASA has created strong partnerships with the FAA and key industry stakeholders. This summary document and accompanying technology artifacts satisfy the third Research Transition Product (RTP) defined in the Applied Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) Research Transition Team (RTT) Plan, which is Dynamic Routes for Arrivals in Weather (DRAW). This technology transfer consists of artifacts for DRAW Arrival Metering (AM) Operations delivered in June 2018, DRAW AM updates, and DRAW Extended Metering (XM) Operations. Blue highlighting indicates the new or modified deliverables. Some of the artifacts in this technology transfer have distribution restrictions that need to be followed. Distribution information is noted in each section. DRAW is a trajectory-based system that combines the legacy Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) weather avoidance technology with an arrival-specific rerouting algorithm and arrival scheduler to improve traffic flows on weather-impacted arrival routes into major airports. First, DRAW identifies flights that could be rerouted to more efficient Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARs) that may have previously been impacted by weather. Second, when weather is impacting the arrival routing, DRAW proposes simple arrival route corrections that enable aircraft to stay on their flight plan while avoiding weather. The DRAW system proposes reroutes early enough to allow Time Based Flow Management (TBFM) to make the necessary schedule adjustments. As a result, metering operations can be sustained longer and more consistently in the presence of weather because the arrival schedule accounts for the dynamic routing intent of arrival flights to deviate around weather. The first DRAW tech transfer in June 2018 focused on arrival metering operations with the DRAW algorithm implemented in the NASA Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) automation software. This tech transfer delivery includes updates for DRAW implemented in FAA’s TBFM 4.7 automation software and preliminary research into DRAW for XM operations.

Isaacson, Douglas R.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Enhancing the Traffic Management Advisor's Schedule by Time Advance

A time advance algorithm associated with the scheduling functionalities of the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) for arrival flights is presented and evaluated. The algorithm enhances TMA's meter fix schedule by advancing the flights' Scheduled Time of Arrival (STA) by an amount that minimizes their systemic operating cost. The systemic operating cost leverages the inherent trade-off of time and fuel efficiency resident in the cost index of modern flight management systems. The resulting STAs are achievable by speeding up the leading flights from their desired nominal speed profiles. A key advantage of this approach is that it reduces systemic delay to tight groupings of arriving aircraft as well as increases sustained throughput of the operation. A fast-time, Monte Carlo simulation that emulates TMA's scheduling functionalities is performed for arrival flights to the Phoenix Airport to quantify the benefit of the time advance algorithm. Results show consistent time saving benefits, ranging from 3 to 50 minutes for 112 flights with varying levels of traffic congestion.

arrival traffic management↗

NASA NTRS2016

Human-in-the-Loop Assessment of Alternative Clearances in Interval Management Arrival Operations

Interval Management Alternative Clearances (IMAC) was a human-in-the-loop simulation experiment conducted to explore the Air Traffic Management (ATM) Technology Demonstration (ATD-1) Concept of Operations (ConOps), which combines advanced arrival scheduling, controller decision support tools, and aircraft avionics to enable multiple time deconflicted, efficient arrival streams into a high-density terminal airspace. Interval Management (IM) is designed to support the ATD-1 concept by having an "Ownship" (IM-capable) aircraft achieve or maintain a specific time or distance behind a "Target" (preceding) aircraft. The IM software uses IM clearance information and the Ownship data (route of flight, current location, and wind) entered by the flight crew, and the Target aircraft's Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast state data, to calculate the airspeed necessary for the IM-equipped aircraft to achieve or maintain the assigned spacing goal.

Baxley, Brian T.↗

NASA NTRS2018

Laboratory Evaluation of Dynamic Routing of Air Traffic in an En Route Arrival Metering Environment

Arrival air traffic operations in the presence of convective weather are subject to uncertainty in aircraft routing and subsequently in flight trajectory predictability. Current management of arrival operations in weather-impacted airspace results in significant flight delay and suspension of arrival metering operations. The Dynamic Routing for Arrivals in Weather (DRAW) concept provides flight route amendment advisories to Traffic Management Coordinators to mitigate the impacts of convective weather on arrival operations. DRAW provides both weather conflict and schedule information for proposed route amendments, allowing air traffic managers to simultaneously evaluate weather avoidance routing and potential schedule and delay impacts. Subject matter experts consisting of retired Traffic Management Coordinators and retired Sector Controllers with arrival metering experience participated in a simulation study of Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center arrival operations. Data were collected for Traffic Management Coordinator and Sector Controller participants over three weeks of simulation activities in October, 2017. Traffic Management Coordinators reported acceptable workload levels, a positive impact on their ability to manage arrival traffic while using DRAW, and initiated weather mitigation reroutes earlier while using DRAW. Sector Controllers also reported acceptable workload levels while using DRAW.

Air Traffic Management↗

NASA NTRS2018

Laboratory Evaluation of Dynamic Routing of Air Traffic in an En Route Arrival Metering Environment

Air Traffic Management↗

NASA NTRS2015

Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration (ATD-1) - Concept to Operations

DEMO↗

NASA NTRS2015

Arrival Scheduling with Shortcut Path Options and Mixed Aircraft Performance

Previous work introduced the concept of using tactical shortcut options to improve schedule conformance in terminal airspace. When a scheduling point is congested, aircraft are scheduled to longer nominal paths, holding shortcut path options in reserve for tactical use if an aircraft is late, thereby improving the schedule conformance, reducing the required scheduling buffer, and increasing throughput. When the scheduling point is less congested, aircraft may be scheduled to the shorter path with original larger scheduling buffers. Previous work focused on a single generic merge point serving aircraft with uniform arrival precision. This paper extends the previous concept to enhance the performance of time-based arrival management and consider mixed aircraft performance. Aircraft equipped to achieve a high degree of schedule conformance may be scheduled to the shorter path under the same conditions that a less equipped aircraft would be scheduled to the longer path, giving the equipped aircraft an advantage that can be seamlessly integrated into the scheduler. The arrival scheduler with shortcut path options for mixed aircraft performance is applied to a model of first-come first-served terminal metering at Los Angeles International Airport. Whereas clear system benefits were found for tactical shortcut routing and higher percentages of equipped aircraft, very little advantage could be seen for equipped over unequipped aircraft that could be used to incentivize early equipage.

Equipage operations↗

NASA NTRS2015

Identifying Key Issues and Potential Solutions for Integrated Arrival, Departure, Surface Operations by Surveying Stakeholder Preferences

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) collaborates with the FAA and industry to provide concepts and technologies that enhance the transition to the next-generation air-traffic management system (NextGen). To facilitate this collaboration, ARMD has a series of Airspace Technology Demonstration (ATD) sub-projects that develop, demonstrate, and transitions NASA technologies and concepts for implementation in the National Airspace System (NAS). The second of these sub-projects, ATD-2, is focused on the potential benefits to NAS stakeholders of integrated arrival, departure, surface (IADS) operations. To determine the project objectives and assess the benefits of a potential solution, NASA surveyed NAS stakeholders to understand the existing issues in arrival, departure, and surface operations, and the perceived benefits of better integrating these operations. NASA surveyed a broad cross-section of stakeholders representing the airlines, airports, air-navigation service providers, and industry providers of NAS tools. The survey indicated that improving the predictability of flight times (schedules) could improve efficiency in arrival, departure, and surface operations. Stakeholders also mentioned the need for better strategic and tactical information on traffic constraints as well as better information sharing and a coupled collaborative planning process that allows stakeholders to coordinate IADS operations. To assess the impact of a potential solution, NASA sketched an initial departure scheduling concept and assessed its viability by surveying a select group of stakeholders for a second time. The objective of the departure scheduler was to enable flights to move continuously from gate to cruise with minimal interruption in a busy metroplex airspace environment using strategic and tactical scheduling enhanced by collaborative planning between airlines and service providers. The stakeholders agreed that this departure concept could improve schedule predictability and suggested several key attributes that were necessary to make the concept successful. The goals and objectives of the planned ATD-2 sub-project will incorporate the results of this stakeholder feedback.

integrated arrival/departure/surface operations↗

NASA NTRS2011

Low-Thrust Orbit Transfer Design for DAWN Operations at VESTA

Upon arrival at the asteroid Vesta, scheduled for July of 2011, the Dawn spacecraft will target a series of four distinct mapping orbits, each providing a unique opportunity to observe Vesta. The unknown, and potentially complex, Vesta gravity field presents challenges for designing low-thrust transfers between these mapping orbits while maintaining spacecraft safety from Vesta occultation of the Sun. This paper provides a description of the orbit transfers designed for Vesta operations along with a discussion of the constraints and methods used to design these transfers. The effect of alternate gravity fields on the viability of the designs and the design method is also considered

low thrust↗

NASA NTRS2016

Distributed Schemes for Integrated Arrival Departure Surface (IADS) Scheduling

The objective of the NRA is to investigate and develop integrated scheduling solutions for arrival, departure and surface operations. The option year briefing summarizes simulation-based analyses of the departure metering process to investigate strategic queue management strategies and their robustness to uncertainty, assess the impact of delaying departures at their gates on blocking the arrivals destined for the same gates, and evaluate the effects and benefits of relaxing current-day MIT constraints when ATD-2 is in operation.

ATD-2↗

NASA NTRS2016

Analyzing Double Delays at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)

When weather or congestion impacts the National Airspace System, multiple different Traffic Management Initiatives can be implemented, sometimes with unintended consequences. One particular perceived inequity that is commonly identified is in the interaction between Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) and time based scheduling of internal departures by the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) (now operationally superseded by the FAA's the Time-Based Flow Management system). Internal departures under TMA scheduling can take large GDP delays, followed by large TMA scheduling delays, because they cannot easily fit into the arrival flow at the runway. In this paper we examine the causes of these double delays through an analysis of arrival operations at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) from June to August 2010. TMA scheduling delays are found to be generally higher than TMA airborne metering delays, regardless of prior GDP delays. Depending on how the double delay is defined, between 42 and 62 of all internal departures in GDP and TMA scheduling experienced double delays in this period. A deep dive into the data reveals that contributors to double delays include upstream flights departing before their Expect Departure Clearance Times (EDCTs); differences in the rates used for setting EDCTs and TMA Scheduled Times of Arrival; differences in the arrival demand expected based on EDCTs and the arrival demand entering TMA; and shorter en route times between takeoff and entry into TMA than assumed in the calculation of flight EDCTs, all of which undermine the sequencing and spacing underlying flight EDCTs. Double delays are also found to coincide with periods in which the virtual runway arrival queue being served by a TMA is large, there are periods of high demand relative to capacity, and there are high airborne metering delays. Data mining techniques are used to confirm that each of these factors contribute to the occurrence of double delay andor high internal departure scheduling delay across three months of data from June to August 2010. Predictors of the occurrence of double delay and high TMA scheduling delay are built using logistic regression, providing prediction accuracies of 69 and 73, respectively.

traffic flow management↗

NASA NTRS2016

Benefit Opportunities for Integrated Surface and Airspace Departure Scheduling: A Study of Operations at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport

NASA is collaborating with the FAA and aviation industry to develop and demonstrate new capabilities that integrate arrival, departure, and surface air-traffic operations. The concept relies on trajectory-based departure scheduling and collaborative decision making to reduce delays and uncertainties in taxi and climb operations. The paper describes the concept and benefit mechanisms aimed at improving flight efficiency and predictability while maintaining or improving operational throughput. The potential impact of the technology is studied and discussed through a quantitative analysis of relevant shortfalls at the site identified for initial deployment and demonstration in 2017: Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Results from trajectory analysis indicate substantial opportunity to reduce taxi delays for both departures and arrivals by metering departures at the gate in a manner that maximizes throughput while adhering to takeoff restrictions due mostly to airspace constraints. Substantial taxi-out delay reduction is shown for flights subject to departure restrictions stemming from traffic flow management initiatives. Opportunities to improve the predictability of taxi, takeoff, and climb operations are examined and their potential impact on airline scheduling decisions and air-traffic forecasting is discussed. In addition, the potential to improve throughput with departure scheduling that maximizes use of available runway and airspace capacity is analyzed.

air traffic management↗

NASA NTRS2018

Impact of Different Trajectory Option Set Participation Levels within an Air Traffic Management Collaborative Trajectory Option Program

This paper presents the methodology and results of a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) simulation study conducted in the Airspace Operations Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center. This study is a part of NASA's ongoing research into developing an Integrated Demand Management (IDM) concept, whose aim is to improve traffic flow management (TFM) by coordinating the FAA's strategic Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS) with its more tactical Time-Based Flow Management (TBFM) system. The purpose of TFM is to regulate air traffic demand so that it is delivered efficiently through constrained airspace resources without exceeding their capacity limits. The IDM concept leverages a new TFMS capability called the Collaborative Trajectory Options Program (CTOP) to strategically pre-condition traffic demand flowing into a TBFM-managed arrival environment, where TBFM is responsible for managing traffic tactically by generating precise arrival schedules. Unlike other TFM tools, CTOP gives flight operators the option of submitting a set of user-preferred alternative trajectories for each flight. CTOP can then use these trajectory option sets (or TOSs) to find user-preferred alternative routes to reduce demand on an overloaded resource. CTOP's effectiveness in redistributing demand is limited, however, by the availability of flights with alternative routes. The research presented in this paper focuses on evaluating the impact on TFM operations by varying the percentage of flights that submit a multiple-option TOS ('TOS participation levels'). Results show the impact on overall system performance and on the rerouted flights themselves. The simulation used a Newark (EWR) airport arrival scenario, with en route weather affecting traffic inbound from the west. Participants were asked to control each of the three arrival flows (north, west, and south) to meet their individual capacity constraints while simultaneously ensuring efficient utilization of the capacity at the destination airport. A large, permeable convective weather cell located southeast of Chicago severely reduced the capacity of the west flow. The study evaluated the impact of five different TOS participation levels on CTOP's ability to re-allocate traffic from the west and improve TFM performance in terms of delay assignment and traffic delivery rate to the airport. Overall, the results showed that increasing TOS submissions allowed the overall system delays to be reduced and fairly distributed among the three arrival flows, at the same time achieving the airport throughput rate. Moreover, it was found that aircraft who submitted a TOS saw a greater reduction in delay, even when they were assigned longer routes. This was particularly true when fewer aircraft submitted a TOS. The results confirm that the CTOP operations with higher TOS participation levels helped utilize the overall National Airspace System (NAS) resources as well as benefited the users who participated.

Yoo, Hyo-Sang↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Human Factors Research Considerations for Terminal Area Urban Air Mobility Operations

In this presentation, we discuss the human factors research challenges from introducing greater levels of automation in a future air transportation concept called Urban Air Mobility (UAM). UAM is an air transportation concept that aims to provide air transportation services to the daily commuter, as well as emergency response and package delivery. The principal innovation over current day large air transport system is the greater distribution of important safety functions to automated and human agents; these functions include air traffic management, traditionally an air traffic controller responsibility. A central aspect of UAM is the development of an automated air traffic manager, whose primary responsibility is to approve airspace access for vehicle operators. Vehicle operator roles may include onboard and remote pilots, as well as a human manager who will supervise an entire fleet. Alternatively, both fleet manager and vehicle operators can be merged into a single role – a feasible option if UAM aircraft are autonomous. In lieu of tower controllers, vertiport managers, with the assistance of automation, will manage arrival and departure schedules between vertiports, as well as supervise surface operations. Our approach here will be to introduce use cases currently being developed by NASA, and then provide preliminary definitions for each of the roles introduced above and how coordination between them can be configured to support the operations within the use cases described. Subsequently, we review the tools and interfaces being developed to support the various roles. To conclude, we present current human factors work related to defining the roles above and suggest future work to advance the UAM concept.

trial planning↗

NASA NTRS2019

Scheduling Improvements Following the Phase 1 Field Evaluation of the ATD-2 Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface Concept

NASA is conducting the Airspace Technology Demonstration-2 (ATD-2) to evaluate an Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) traffic management system that extends traffic sequencing for the entire life-cycle of a flight from departure gate to arrival gate within multi-airport, metroplex environments. After development and testing in human-in-the-loop simulations, the IADS system was deployed to Charlotte Douglas International Airport for a three-year field evaluation. From the initial IADS concept development through the end of the Phase 1 field evaluation many lessons were learned with regards to the IADS scheduler. In this paper we describe how data from the Phase 1 field evaluation helped identify scheduler improvements and guided the implementation of refinements. The improvements in the IADS scheduler described in this paper are incorporated into the IADS Phase 2 scheduler enabling strategic Surface Metering Programs and will be evaluated during the field evaluation.

Airspace Technology Demonstration-2↗