When it comes to redesigning the nation's airspace to accommodate ever-growing traffic, one might think the sky would be the limit. But reality often has a way of bringing theory back down to earth—especially in airspace design, where changes at one airport (such as allowing more planes to depart) could affect another airport (for example, increasing congestion and delays).

With such a delicate balance to maintain, organizations involved in airspace redesign can save themselves a lot of time and money if they can know whether or not an idea has a realistic chance of working well before they ask pilots and controllers to implement the change. With MITRE's Fast Time Analysis (FTA) Lab, they can get exactly this kind of perspective.

Created and operated by MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), the FTA Lab offers the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and international aviation authorities a valued service by letting them test out their ideas, see the consequences of the suggested changes on other airports and airspace, and decide if the changes are worthwhile. CAASD staff use an array of tools, as well as the their own knowledge of aviation and technology, to create models of the changes in airspace at a particular facility and show their impact elsewhere in the skies and on the ground. "What we do in the FTA Lab is build models of the redesigned airspace so we can get an idea of how the different proposed alternatives will work, and identify the ones that will work the best. We may be able to eliminate a lot of these ideas because they have a lot of potential risk and a lot of potential negative impact with marginal benefit," says Brian Simmons, a simulation modeling engineer, formerly in the Airport and Airspace Analysis Program area and now leader of MITRE's Taipei site.

Managing Change

The U.S. airspace design currently in place has many similarities to the structure created in the 1920s to deliver airmail, when there were relatively few planes in the sky. In 1928, the year before the first organized air traffic control initiatives began, there were 294 scheduled airline flights in the United States. Back then plans were made for individual areas and sectors, not with an eye to the impact they would have on the airspace as a whole. Redesigning the airspace is a complex process involving government officials, controllers, pilots, and others. Change must come in increments because approximately 60,000 flights per day have to keep flying and landing safely, even as a redesign is being implemented. Moreover, for many users of the airspace, the current arrangement is the devil they know, and they often fear change may take place at the expense of the system users or the passengers.

"Everyone in the system has grown accustomed to the way the system works now," says Simmons. "No one wants to make changes unless they're sure that the changes will be worth all the time and trouble to make them. In the FTA lab, we try to provide assessments so that they can have a better basis upon which to make a decision."

How? CAASD staff members use an array of tools, including the Total Airspace and Airport Modeler (developed by Preston Aviation Solutions, an Australian firm), the Sector Design and Analysis Tool (developed by the FAA), and a host of MITRE-developed tools, to analyze airspace around airports and in en route airspace. Staff use actual recent air traffic data to make the simulation very realistic. Watching the simulations, decision-makers can see how suggested changes will impact such factors as traffic, altitude restrictions, and noise levels, among many other factors. But it isn't the technology that makes the CAASD lab unique; most of the tools are available commercially. The difference lies in the knowledge of the people who work there and their experience with the aviation issues. The CAASD airspace team includes a number of former pilots, air traffic controllers, information technology professionals, and former employees of the FAA. Many of them have expert knowledge on airspace design from years of working alongside air traffic controllers and other decision-makers. That gives them not only the ability to interpret and present results in an unbiased fashion, but to devise ways to use existing technology to better evaluate proposed changes.

"I think what really makes us unique is the amount of experience we have doing redesign projects," says Debra Pool, program manager for Airport and Airspace Analysis at MITRE. "Nobody has as much experience as we have. Also, we're not a one-tool shop. We bring to bear four or five complex tools and, using our tools and knowledge, we can bring a unique approach to solving every problem."

According to Lillian Ryals, director for Air Traffic Management Operations and Procedures, "The application of fast-time and human-in-the-loop simulation and modeling to the airspace redesign work is an excellent example of how we bring the breadth of our expertise to solve complex problems. Airspace redesign encompasses interactions from the runways at an airport, to interactions among airports in a region, to interactions among multiple terminal areas and en route center airspace. To ensure the operational and technical feasibility of new airspace designs, we also bring together our experience in areas such as procedure development, and communications, navigation, surveillance (CNS)."

Filling a Gap

CAASD staffers are always looking for new ways to look at aviation issues and to approach solving a problem. Sharing information and ideas helps them do that. For example, the airspace analysts were looking at a CAASD-developed tool called Terminal Area Route Generation, Evaluation, and Traffic Simulation (TARGETS), which was originally developed as an aid to streamline the development of terminal area navigation procedures. The airspace analysts, however, thought TARGETS could also be used to simulate the immediate airspace around an airport—providing additional data—and help them test redesign ideas. With some added functionality, TARGETS can now be used in this way.

Such creative thinking came in handy when a group of controllers from Cleveland Hopkins Airport approached CAASD recently. They had been asked to integreate the entry and exit routes at the airport with a program to improve the flow of traffic in the airspace between Michigan and Florida. It was a prospect that left some of the controllers uncertain about the plan's impact on safety and workability.

Help came in the form of the enhanced TARGETS tool. CAASD staffers spent three days with Cleveland controllers, and, using TARGETS, they showed them how the proposed changes would affect their operations. At the end, the controllers offered a general endorsement of the new airspace proposals.

"This is exactly the right role for CAASD—to be facilitating, informing, making sure, to the best of our ability, that these decisions are made on the basis of quantitative information," says Patricia Massimini, associate program manager for Airport and Airspace Analysis.

NOTE: This story is part of a three-piece series on CAASD's aviation laboratories. To see the first story, go to:

• Part 1: The Air Traffic Management Lab: Working the Issues from Takeoff to Landing

—by W. Russell Woolard

Related Information

Websites

• Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD)
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

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