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Stormy Weather: Managing Air Traffic Around Problem Areas April 2005
In the early hours of July 14, 2004, heavy Midwest thunderstorms intensified as they moved east. By 7 a.m., major flight delays had developed and routes were blocked to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington airports. The day's final tally: more than 3,000 delays, 1,536 cancelled departures, 155 flights in holding patterns, and 102 flights diverted. Fortunately, this isn't a typical summer day for the National Airspace System. But because it magnifies the typical challenges posed by the severe weather season (March to September), it's useful for extracting lessons learned. MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) is helping the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) avoid another July 14. We are applying analytical skills to air traffic management problems. For example, to learn what went wrong that day in July, MITRE and the FAA made the incident the centerpiece for a system-wide review with the airlines and other users of the airspace. Summer planning: S2K+5 Five years ago, CAASD engineers began working with the FAA on what is now an annual summer focus: S2K (Spring/Summer 2000). The effort is handled by CAASD's Tactical Operations group led by Senior Principal Engineer Diane Boone. The challenge this year, she says, "is not just to do better than last year, but to do better with more traffic," as traffic levels climb toward the peaks reached before Sept. 11, 2001. This year's preparation (S2K+5) began in October with a thorough review of 2004 at the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) in Herndon, Virginia. Representatives from the FAA, the airlines, and other organizations analyzed what worked well and what didn't, focusing on the July 14 case study. From that review, the FAA distilled a list of suggested changes for the FAA and airspace users to work on. As part of the follow-up to that review, CAASD hosted a workshop at its Air Traffic Management lab in January for the FAA's Northeast traffic management specialists to explore solutions to severe weather problems. "It was quite successful," says Program Manager Debby Pool, noting that the FAA has asked for similar pre-season workshops targeted at other areas. "We really leveraged the tools that we have in the lab and the visualization capabilities," she says. "Instead of just sitting there and drawing on a map, they actually had some real traffic flows and weather data to look at, and they could use our model to see the impact of rerouting."
One idea on the table is to be more flexible with existing routes, such as using arrival routes to accommodate departures under certain conditions, says Pool. Tactical Operations Every day members of Boone's team work alongside FAA employees at the ATCSCC. "We evaluate how well things worked and try to give the FAA some 'what-if' analysis of alternative actions," says Boone. "We've got simulations, models, and analytic capabilities to do that." The team also helps the FAA come to grips with difficult persistent issues, such as summer season delays and the chronic congestion at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, by modeling the impact of rerouting on various levels of traffic. One successful tactic for dealing with spring and summer thunderstorms is known as SWAP—Severe Weather Avoidance Plans. These are pre-defined options for rerouting flights around thunderstorms. Set up in a "playbook" fashion, they're easy to communicate and put into action. Even when the summer thunderstorms have passed, disparate events such as NASCAR races, the Orange Bowl, Donald Trump's recent wedding, and winter snowstorms also create air traffic management challenges. In addition, for heavy winter traffic to Florida airports, we work with the FAA to analyze and validate the effectiveness of the "snowbird playbook" set of routes and the North/South "snowbird" traffic impact onthe airspace system. For example, for the weekend of February 19–21, the team analyzed the "snowbird" traffic impact from the Daytona 500 and Presidents' Day holiday. Life in Tactical Ops Two Tactical Ops teams work with the FAA Command Center, one focused on quality assurance and one on the daily traffic flow management operations (known as floor operations). A lot of what they do is "instant replay," says Associate Program Manager Randy McGuire. "The team will replay the previous day to see if a better decision could have been made." Monitoring daily floor operations, we observe and look for ways to improve the processes or identify research that could lead to improvements. We also respond to "pop-ups"—FAA or customer questions that call for data analysis. Was a particular flight unfairly delayed? Were alternate playbook routes used, by whom, and how often? Which worked better in similar situations—a ground stop or a ground delay? Our role at the Command Center is to analyze events and new tools, not to take part in air traffic management decisions. "Having the tools out there as a research platform also provides some level of validation for the tools," says McGuire. We continually develop tools and track down new data so analyses can be done better and faster. "When we started, it used to take multiple days sometimes to answer these questions," says Mark Huberdeau, a lead engineer in Tactical Ops, who has been in the S2K program since its inception. New tools have dramatically reduced this time. "Instead of taking a week or two to answer a 'what-happens-if' scenario, sometimes we can do it in two hours or less," he says. Several key tools have already been transferred to the FAA and incorporated into its Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS). One example is the Flow Evaluation Area/Flow Constrained Area (FEA/FCA) tool that lets FAA facilities see information on flights that will pass through a defined evaluation area and determine whether constraints—such as reroutes or ground delays—are necessary. This MITRE-developed technology has had great impact, according to Huberdeau. For example, a recent MITRE analysis of the "Chokepoint" reroute used for heavy traffic into the New York area airports showed that the FEA/FCA tool has cut the duration of restrictions by more than half, from six hours to three or less. The Reroute Advisory tool, for which MITRE was a key contributor, has also proven effective. It automatically identifies individual flights subject to a reroute and feeds that information to the FAA and the airlines along with details of the new route. Developing New Tools The tool set that CAASD can bring to bear is extensive, growing, and improving. The research platform for trying out new tools for the ETMS is called CAPER—the CAASD Analysis Platform for En Route. One tool awaiting implementation by the FAA is Reroute Modeling, which McGuire calls the"crown jewel" of the system. This complex software analyzes current routes and predicts the impact on the airspace of rerouting flights. Automated tracking of ground delays is another future capability. Instead of relying on phone calls from airports for notice of delays, the Command Center could eventually use CAPER's ground delay monitor function to track departure delays in real time. The team is currently validating the software at the Command Center and looking for ways to augment the tool's current data sources (historical data and airlines' real-time cockpit messages) to enhance the process and provide reliable ground delay information to Command Center specialists. We are also investigating airborne delay monitoring to identify cumulative delays as flights move through a series of sectors. Information on airborne delays could be used in a variety of ways to help with FAA traffic management decisions. The FAA-MITRE Team The work performed by Tactical Ops for the Command Center is based on a successful division of labor: "The FAA personnel know how to work traffic intuitively and they understand what works and what doesn't work," says Boone. "We have people trained to do analysis—pulling data, analyzing it, using spreadsheets, and developing tools to do the analysis. It's a very good teaming arrangement." One participant at the January workshop told Boone that it was like James Bond going to see gadget-master Q—CAASD's tools really helped them understand problems and come up with solutions. From her office overlooking the flight path into Washington Reagan National Airport, Boone sums up what it's like to be part of the Tactical Ops team: "It's great to be able to have an immediate impact." —by Shari Dwyer Related Information Websites |
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| Page last updated: April 19, 2005 | Top of page |
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