Benefits of Mid-Term Flexible Airspace Management in Presence of Weather


== Abstract ==

By examining the relative benefit of reconfigured airspace to the original airspace under the same traffic conditions, this paper assessed Flexible Airspace Management that reconfigures airspace boundaries. Using weather rerouted flight plans, four airspace design methods reconfigured the original airspace design in Kansas City Center. Air traffic simulations with estimated NextGen midterm (2018) airport capacities and traffic demand were performed for the original and each reconfigured airspace design. Analysis showed that within the simulated scenarios, reconfigured airspace demonstrated user benefit by decreasing 68% of the number of flights needing to be delayed or turned away from entering the airspace to maintain balance between traffic demand and capacity. Utilization of available air traffic control resources increased by 8%, demonstrating service provider benefit. Airspace design methods that applied more changes to the original airspace achieved more benefit. However, increased change from the original airspace configuration implied a possible increase in air traffic controller workload during the transition from the original to the reconfigured airspace.


== Original document ==

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

* [http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fb60/88dd250e7937cd4253fdab3ff776d2ecfb3a.pdf http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fb60/88dd250e7937cd4253fdab3ff776d2ecfb3a.pdf]

* [http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2011-6690 http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2011-6690],
: [http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2011-6690 http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2011-6690]

* [https://aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf https://aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf],
: [https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2011-6690 https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2011-6690],
: [http://aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf http://aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf],
: [https://www.aviationsystems.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf https://www.aviationsystems.arc.nasa.gov/publications/2011/AIAA-2011-6690.pdf],
: [https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2317535979 https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2317535979]