Reducing Flight Delays Through Better Traffic Management

As air traffic in the United States has grown over the last several years, traffic demand has begun to outstrip capacity. As of 2005, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had no effective approach for strategically managing a weather event that has been very disruptive to the national aviation system---large-scale thunderstorms that block the major flight routes in the northeastern United States. The operations research team that supports the FAA's efforts to provide innovations in air traffic management, led by researchers at Metron Aviation, Inc. and the Volpe Transportation Center, recognized the consequence of this operational deficiency and set out to resolve it. In this paper, we show how this team(1) developed and applied system-simulation models to quantify the extent of the traffic flow management problem and convey its magnitude to the FAA and to the aviation industry;(2) designed the Airspace Flow Program (AFP), a new approach to managing air traffic that could correct the problem within the limitations of a short development cycle and a change-resistant culture;(3) designed and developed an interactive simulation system that could be and was used to refine and perfect this concept prior to deployment by developing policies on the use of a decision support system;(4) engaged FAA and airline traffic management experts in a series of interactive exercises using the simulation system to develop the final software design, operational procedures, and decision rules for deployment and use; and(5) provided a clear and convincing postdeployment benefits assessment for the new traffic management approach.The deployment of this new capability was an enormous success that both the FAA and the airline community heralded widely. The postdeployment impact assessment showed benefits to the aircraft operators and the flying public of almost $190 million in 2006 and 2007, the first two years of use, compared to less than $5 million in design and development costs. Broader usage of AFPs and new applications for them show a projected 10-year benefit of approximately $2.8 billion.