During the severe weather season, generally
encompassing the months of March through
October, the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) and National Airspace System (NAS)
customers collaborate on strategies to minimize
the disruption convective weather has on traffic
flows. After many observations of
transcontinental rerouting decisions, a Transcon
Options paper was published in the Journal of
Air Traffic Control, April 2004. The proposal
suggested that on days when convective
weather was forecast over large areas of the
eastern states, departures from western airports
would file flight plans for customer preferred
routings to decision point(s) west of the forecast
weather area and then include a reroute around
the forecast weather area along a Constraint
Avoidance Route to Destination (CARD). If
weather develops, aircraft are afforded the
opportunity to operate along customer preferred
routes for at least a portion of their flight. If the
weather does not develop and only if controller
workload permits, air traffic control (ATC) could
allow flights to continue through the forecast
weather area.
As proposed, the Transcon Options concept
allows customers to operate their flights along
customer preferred paths for most of their flight.
This paper suggests that by using existing and
integrating improved weather forecast products
with Traffic Flow Management (TFM) Decision
Support Systems (DSSs), flow managers and
customers can better collaborate on reroutes to
avoid weather and provide the customer with
fuel efficient routing alternatives.
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