Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) Traffic Management Advisor (TMA)

1. . Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) Transportation authorities around the globe are working to keep air traffic moving on time in a safely Metered flexible environment. Traffic Management Advisor is a robust decision support tool that enables controllers to keep pace with growing airspace demands. • Benefits • Increase Airport Capacity to maximize flow of arrivals and utilization of airport capacity • Achieve optimized flow of aircraft over adapted meter points to ensure orderly arrival at airport surface • Reduce Air Traffic Controller Workloads through easy to use graphical interface • Efficient arrivals results minimizes both holding and vectoring • Streamline and schedule departure aircraft into overhead stream Why Choose CSC for Your Advanced ATM Solutions? CSCs Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) will enable a regional/national integrated metering trajectory flow capability that will significantly streamline arrivals and departures from OEP airports, reduce delays, and increase airport capacity. ITS services was a natural outgrowth of CSC’s fundamental Since 1996, CSC has been developing and maintaining the CTAS TMA for the FAA. TMA is a system designed to optimize arrival air traffic flow to the runway threshold. Its goal is to develop a coordinated arrival sequence and schedule, display this plan to Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) in the Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), and provide optional advisories to sector controllers that enable them to implement the plan. History of Delivery Since 1996, CSC has been developing and maintaining the CTAS TMA for the FAA. TMA is a system designed to optimize arrival air traffic flow to the runway threshold. Its goal is to develop a coordinated arrival sequence and schedule, display this plan to Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) in the Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), and provide optional advisories to sector controllers that enable them to implement the plan. • Experience. Results. • Realtime Arrival Schedules: CTAS TMA is a Decision Support Tool (DST) for airport arrival and departure management. The tool calculates arrival schedules in real time based on three factors: • Flight Plan and track data received from the Host Computer System • Winds aloft data received from National Weather Service (NWS) • Information entered by the TMCs and controllers • Maximize Enroute Operations: TMA uses computational techniques to transform the information available in the existing National Airspace System (NAS) into optimized traffic flow schedules for airport traffic managers. For arrivals, it produces an arrival plan meeting flow requirements for the adapted airport. • Tools that delivers results: The tool achieves this by generating a schedule that is free of conflict at runway and meter fixes. TMA graphically depicts fix/arc crossing times of arrival aircraft. It does this by making continuous predictions of aircraft Estimated Time of Arrivals (ETAs). Scheduling algorithms use the ETAs to compute arrival schedules that include Scheduled Times of Arrival (STAs) for each aircraft to specific scheduling points such as Runway Threshold, Final Approach Fix (FAF), Meter Fix/Meter Fix Arc, Outer Meter Arc, and Outer Outer Arc. The TMCs use separation strategies to produce spatial and time-based metering, such as aircraft sequencing, miles-in-trail, and STAs for aircraft at their meter fix and points that lie on the Center TRACON boundary. For more information contact: David M. Rhodes, Director Advanced ATM Solutions drhodes5@csc.com 301-921-3326

2. Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) Experience Results. Supports Departure Metering between Sectors and Centers: An En Route Departure Capability (EDC) function has been added by CSC to support departure metering to points on the boundaries between sectors or centers. Users are able to optimize streams of aircraft leaving their facility and schedule departures from internal airports to merge with other traffic. As with arrival TMA, users are able to specify scheduling constraints and display time ordered schedules and geographic views of position data. EDC is currently being deployed to all FAA centers. CSC’s CTAS TMA software provides two main display views: a Timeline Graphical User Interface (TGUI) and a geographic Planview Graphical User Interface (PGUI). These views give the TMCs insight into traffic flow in the ARTCC area of interest. In addition, these views enable the TMCs to interpret the traffic flow situation and make strategic and tactical planning decisions to manage the flow. TMCs make inputs through these GUIs to alter traffic flow and provide advisories to the enroute air traffic controllers regarding TMC changes. ETA and STA timelines are produced and displayed by the TGUI, which places the metered aircraft in a time-sequential spatial order. Leverage CSC’s Experience: CTAS TMA Build 2, developed under an evolutionary spiral approach paradigm, is as of March 2007 deployed to all 20 ARTCC’s in the United States. Spiral development has allowed for a building block approach, incrementally developing and deploying system functionality and incrementally providing support products and services. Beginning with the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA)/Ames Research Center TMA concept development prototype, CSC developed more than 380,000 additional lines of code for Spiral 1 that provided failure recovery capabilities, system monitor and control functionality, a redeveloped object-oriented GUI, and the Host ATM Data Distribution System. Innovation. Partnership. Leadership. • Spiral 2 development added data recording and playback capabilities, internal departures, meter fix arc, and irregular-shaped TRACON functionality. Spiral 3, with adjacent center data feed functionality included in the initial release, is still on-going with new releases. • In addition to software enhancements, CSC develops TMA adaptation data sets and has completed the national deployment of TMA. TMA deployment includes the main TMA system at the center and remote GUIs at adjacent centers, TRACONs, and towers. • Innovation and Thought Leadership Enables the FAA Achieve its Mission: CSC continues to develop and maintain the Spiral 3 software baseline with recent additions to the TMA system that include: • Use of EDC for Departure Scheduling • Interface to STARS • Adjacent Center Metering • Multiple TRACON Support • Collaborative Arrival Planner • Dynamic Routing around Special Use Airspaces • Stepped Descent Processing