Exploring tactical interaction between dynamic airspace configuration and traffic flow management (DAC-TFM)

A primary goal of air traffic management (ATM) is to balance capacity and demand. In most situations, demand management strategies, which incur costs to the user, should only be used after both airport and airspace capacity management strategies have been exhausted. However, once demand management is required, the original capacity management solution may no longer be the best solution. Intuitively, there is a high interdependency between solutions for capacity and demand. This paper discusses an approach for the exploration of feedback mechanisms between dynamic airspace configuration (DAC) (i.e., the capacity component) and traffic flow management (TFM) (i.e., the demand component) and presents initial results. The approach utilizes two interacting simulations. The DAC simulation, referred to as the NAS Airspace Dynamic Analysis and Partitioning Tool (NASADAPT), is based on the previously-developed DAC method known as the Dynamic Airspace Units (DAU) model. The TFM simulation, referred to as the Dynamic Airspace Routing Tool (DART), is a super-fast-time NAS-wide simulation model that represents TFM initiatives such as ground delays, reroutes, airborne holding and cancellations. The DAC-TFM feedback mechanism is used to make adjustments to capacity and/or demand as the situation evolves. An automated DAC-TFM interaction process, using NASADAPT-DART interaction as a proxy, has been developed to conduct a series of progressively more complex experiments exploring this interaction. Using the TFM-only solution (no DAC) as the reference point, the total cost of delays, reroutes, and cancellations was determined and compared to the costs of candidate DAC-TFM interaction concepts. Cost comparison results show that the single-iteration TFM-DAC-TFM loop, where TFM helped DAC which in turn helped TFM, produced noticeably lower TFM costs versus TFM alone (no DAC). Adding more iterations to the DAC-TFM loop did not result in significant further cost reduction for either current or reasonably escalated traffic levels.