Air Traffic System Guides Planes in for Landing

It's rush hour. Highways are jammed, freeways are congested and travelers expect delays. But an innovative tool keeps runways at the nation's airports free from gridlock.

Hundreds of miles from their destinations, aircraft are being directed by teams of air traffic controllers and traffic management coordinators. They instruct pilots to adjust speed and altitude, and take their place in line to land and maximize capacity and flow upon arrival. They direct planes taking off from nearby airports to wait for departure times that will allow them to fly without delay.

The TMCs utilize a system developed by CSC for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), called Center Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) Automation Systems Traffic Management Advisor, or CTAS TMA. Since 1996, CSC has developed and maintained this system for the FAA, and new capabilities are constantly added.

TMA: The Technology of Arrival

The TMA system is designed to optimize air traffic flow to runways across the nation. Its goal is to develop a coordinated sequence and schedule for aircraft and display this plan to air traffic controllers. The tool calculates arrival schedules in real time based on flight plans, wind data and information entered by air traffic coordinators and controllers.

As planes approach an airport, the system creates optimized traffic flow schedules. It produces an arrival plan meeting flow requirements for the airport. The tool achieves this by generating a schedule that eliminates conflict on the runway. It graphically depicts arrival times of aircraft on screen and continually predicts aircraft estimated times of arrival.

With this information, air traffic management coordinators can even out traffic flow using separation strategies such as spacing and sequencing aircraft for arrival, and determining optimal departure times. The timelines are transmitted to air traffic controllers who communicate them to aircraft. The elimination of peaks and valleys in traffic flow increases capacity and efficiency at airports and saves fuel by reducing departure delays.

CSC's Role in CTAS TMA

In the 1990s, when the FAA found that the traditional approach to developing air traffic management systems wasn't working well, the agency tasked CSC to begin develop systems under a new evolutionary spiral paradigm. Spiral development allowed for a building block approach by incrementally building and deploying system functionality and providing support products and services.

The original intent was to replace the old systems at six air traffic control centers. The program worked so well, however, that the FAA decided to deploy it to all 20 Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) in the United States. That deployment was completed in March 2007.

Features of the new systems include failure recovery capabilities, system monitor and control functionality, a redeveloped graphic user interface, an air traffic management data distribution system, data recording and playback capabilities, adjacent center data feed functionality, and local departure airport scheduling.

En Route Departure Scheduling

The most recent phase, deployed in mid-2007, added En Route Departure Capability (EDC) to support departure spacing. The new functionality enables users to optimize streams of aircraft leaving their facility and schedule departures from internal airports to merge with other traffic. As with arrival TMA, users are able to specify scheduling constraints and display time-ordered schedules and geographic views of position data.

The same phase included multiple TRACON support, a Collaborative Arrival Planner, and dynamic routing capability around special-use airspaces. CSC continues to maintain software developed through all phases.

"Overall, the relationship with CSC has been excellent," observed Rob Williams, FAA program manager for CTAS TMA. "It's a very collaborative relationship, and CSC is very responsive. CSC did a good job of helping us keep the cost down and developing the system on time. We've never been behind schedule and always been within the budget."

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