Air transportation in the Asia Pacific region is growing rapidlyópassenger counts are expected
to triple in the next 20 years.
In response, the Association for Southeast Asian Nations is embarking on its Open Sky
policy, an effort to promote greater air transportation efficiency.
To best succeed, Open Sky will need to embrace new air traffic management concepts. For over
50 years, MITRE has partnered with the Federal Aviation Administration to develop such concepts,
one of them being Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management.
A common challenge of traffic flow management operations is to effectively manage traffic
during periods when demand exceeds the capacity of airports and/or routes.
Air traffic in the Asia Pacific region, with its many busy airports closely packed together,
is extremely susceptible to demand capacity imbalances.
All it takes is a plane held up at the gate by a mechanical failure or a thunderstorm
to pop up out of nowhere for crippling delays to ripple through the air traffic system.
These demand capacity challenges will only worsen as traffic density in the Asia Pacific
region continues to rise.
A current method for managing capacity demand imbalances is through the assignment of arrival
and departure slots.
This method works well under normal conditions, but can prove inflexible.
If there is a loss of capacity after slots have been assigned, flights need to be canceledóat
a huge cost to airlines and a huge inconvenience to travelers.
What is needed is a new concept in managing capacity demand imbalances, one that improves
the ability of air traffic controllers to make informed decisions in response to a disruption
while providing the tools needed to simplify and strengthen coordination and communication
along the decision-making chain.
Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management allows controllers to respond swiftly to a mechanical
failure at the gate or a pop-up thunderstorm, ending disruptions before they can spread
through the rest of the air traffic control system.
Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management realigns the roles and responsibilities in the three
links of the air traffic management decision-making chain: the air route traffic control center,
the terminal radar approach control, and the tower.
Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management moves the place of control to the link with the
best grasp of the relevant data and with the most at stake in the outcome of the decision
and provides each link with the ability to make its decisions 60 to 90 minutes ahead
of time.
Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management provides separate decision support tools to all three
links. The tools provide all facilities with capacity and constraint information in a uniform
format.
By drawing from uniform data, each facility can make decisions and take actions with only
minimal discussion with the other facilities.
During departures, the air route traffic control center will be responsible for determining
the capacity across all departure fixes; the terminal radar approach control will allocate
available capacity to each airport to satisfy the capacity set by the air route traffic
control center and by the needs of its own airspace; and the tower will assign the appropriate
flights to the slots allocated to them With arrivals, the decision chain is managed
in reverse.
The tower will be responsible for determining the arrival capacity of each airport; the
Terminal Radar Approach Control will allocate the available arrival capacity to each arrival
flow; and the Air Route Traffic Control Center will assign flights to the arrival slots,
either manually or automatically.
By placing the responsibility for each decision with the facility best equipped to make that
decision, and by providing each decision maker with the right information at the right time,
Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management allows everyone in the decision-making chain to react
quickly and effectively to sudden shifts in air traffic conditions.
As the Association for Southeast Asian Nations embarks on its Open Sky policy, MITRE concepts
such as Distributed Air Traffic Flow Management and MITRE's expertise in developing the tools
for such concepts are available to help give it flight.