Air Traffic Management Concept Baseline Definition - The Boeing ...

1 Introduction
This report presents an operational concept for the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS)
through the year 2015, including a transition path from the current system. This concept
was developed by Boeing Commercial Airplane Group for NASA’s Advanced Air
Transportation Technologies (AATT) program, under subcontract with NEXTOR
(National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research). The contract was
awarded as part of Milestone 1.0.0 of the AATT program, which will provide a baseline
air traffic management (ATM) operational concept to guide the program’s research
efforts.
The Boeing team worked actively with NASA experts, the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) Air Traffic Operational Concept Development Team and NEXTOR
faculty members from MIT and UC Berkeley during the six month contract period.
1.1 Objectives
The primary objective of this work was to define and document the probable evolution of
the NAS through the year 2015, based on current FAA and industry activity and the ATM
system mission. This evolution path, stated in the form of an operational concept, was to
provide part of a road map to guide AATT program research.
In order to achieve this objective, the team undertook the following tasks:
• Collect and document NAS stakeholder needs and expectations for the system in terms
of safety, capacity and efficiency.
• Identify the primary driving forces affecting the NAS modernization, along with the
most important constraints placed upon the system.
• Establish a probable baseline operational concept for 2015 and at least one feasible
transition path to that future concept.
• Provide insight for AATT planning that will allow the program to achieve a certain
level of robustness with respect to NAS modernization uncertainty.
The last task, that of providing insight into NAS modernization uncertainty, is perhaps the
most important one currently, due to the lack of the industry’s clear vision of the desired
end state and transition path. The following are the major factors contributing to the
uncertainty:
• Political climate
• System size and complexity
• Diversity of users
• Safety criticality
• Human operators in demanding roles
• Reliance on rapidly developing tehnology
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