Field evaluation of an airport configuration management decision support tool

Airport and Runway Configuration Management (ARCM) is an operational prototype decision support tool designed to improve traffic managers' effectiveness in choosing runway configurations and runway assignment policies. ARCM ingests flight schedules, real-time surveillance, and wind forecasts and generates recommended schedules of airport configurations that reduce delays and travel times between the gate and terminal airspace boundary while complying with system traffic flow constraints. The recommendations cover a rolling tactical timeframe of 90 minutes into the future. The web-based ARCM interface displays recommendations and statistics describing the predicted impact of a given configuration schedule on flight operations. The interface is designed to facilitate collaboration between air traffic control tower and terminal area traffic managers and, potentially, flight operators during the configuration planning process. ARCM was tested in a live field evaluation conducted over five three-day periods in January-March 2014 at Memphis International Airport. This paper describes the ARCM tool and details the outcomes of the field evaluation.