Capacity-Enhancing Air Traffic Management Concept

This paper presents a capacity enhancing, gateto-gate air traffic management (ATM) operational concept for the US National Airspace System (NAS) in 2020. The concept defines five core services for ATM: airspace, flow, traffic, separation and information management. Flow, traffic and separation management are the services that directly influence air traffic movement, while airspace management determines the physical resources available to accommodate traffic demand. Information management is a new service that provides the collection, storage, and dissemination of information throughout the system. The planning and control authority of flow, traffic and separation management is determined using a partitioning of planning time horizons to each service. This paper also outlines a method for assessing the benefits of these and other operational concepts.