Tactical airport configuration management

NASA has been studying a System Oriented Runway Management concept that seeks to harmonize automation systems managing airborne and taxiing aircraft within a metroplex to achieve a more holistic traffic management solution. One element of the SORM initiative has been to develop a new automated decision support capability that can plan the airport configuration to optimize operational efficiency at an airport subject to traffic and weather uncertainty. While planning the runway configuration can provide benefit and is required by other automation concepts, larger benefits are possible by planning other airport configuration decisions, such as runway assignment policies, that are currently made manually by controllers. A laboratory prototype of the airport configuration planning algorithm, referred to as Tactical Runway Configuration Management (TRCM), has been implemented and studied within a simulation environment. This paper describes the TRCM algorithm as well as simulation results for three scenarios drawn from historical data at two airports under various weather and traffic conditions. The TRCM-recommended sequence of airport configurations are shown to result in significantly less delay than the airport configurations that were actually used by controllers, illustrating both the potential benefit from airport configuration optimization and the ability of the developed TRCM algorithm to provide effective airport configuration schedules. The application to several, distinct airports demonstrates the approach is capable of handling the differences between airports with a common algorithm, while providing decision support that respects the current procedures at those airports. Consequently, TRCM could be easily deployed to any airport within the National Airspace System. The algorithmic approach is also extensible to future operational scenarios, providing larger benefits in NextGen environments. NASA has begun the process of transferring the initial TRCM technology to the FAA.