“We took the FAA’s version of TMA as a platform and then added a lot of capability to it to create these other capabilities,” Davis said. “That’s another thing that makes the transition very nice for the FAA: they can use their own platform to go further. In fact, in the TSS development, and to some degree in the PDRC development, we actually recycled their software to build our new software. We built an initial concept on our old TMA from the early 2000s, until we saw that the technology concept was viable. Next we had technology interchange meetings with the FAA and we explored whether we had a match. Once we agreed that we in fact did have a good concept, we would take their latest version of TMA (now called Time-Based Flow Management or TBFM) back into our lab and then rebuild the new capability on top of that.”

“So now we’re in a cycle where every time the FAA releases a new version of TBFM, which happens approximately annually, that version of software comes back to our lab and we add our technology on top of it. Today, when they get our technologies, they are getting their most up to date software version with this new capability on top of it. As you can imagine, that makes it a lot easier for them to deploy and possibly a lot cheaper too,” he added.

Davis described the technology transfer relationship between NASA and the FAA as constantly improving. Instead of trying to convince the FAA that a particular NASA innovation is viable, which was initially how this type of work began, there is now a continuing dialog with FAA’s NextGen technologists, including some of their chief scientists for NextGen. Together, the FAA and NASA participate in Research Transition Teams to decide what are some of the most promising technologies, such that once NASA completes development and testing, the FAA is well aware of the technology and can prepare to receive it.

 

Developing New Tools

PDRC is not the end of the story concerning precision departures. NASA is working today on ExtendPDRC, which expands the PDRC domain into an environment that contains several nearby airports, and therefore several overhead streams of air traffic.

“In the D.C. area, for example, you have Baltimore Washington International, Dulles International, and Reagan National,” Cavolowsky said. “The arrival and the departure paths of those airports create interesting dependencies and timing and interaction. So the extension of PDRC is supporting efficient departures and insertion of overhead streams where multiple airport considerations are a concern. Looking at it from the D.C. area is one thing, but extrapolating that to efficient, complex departure paths around a metroplex is where there is opportunity for that to be improved.”

Similarly, NASA researchers have begun flight-testing for ASTAR, or Airborne Spacing for Terminal Arrival Routes, which promises to reduce environmental impacts and improve the efficiency of aircraft spacing along a flight path. A complement to TSS, the controller-directed spacing tool, the ASTAR computer software is designed to give pilots specific speed information and guidance in the cockpit, showing when they are over or under an optimum speed, to keep a set interval on the aircraft in front of them on the same flight path to a destination airport. The tool would make possible a “follow the leader” approach that would enable pilots to keep their aircraft more precisely spaced with others. The software is being flight-tested aboard Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator 787 aircraft.

Another tool undergoing real-world testing is Dynamic Weather Routes, or DWR, a computer software tool that constantly analyzes air traffic and identifies storms threatening enough to require course changes by aircraft. The software then determines routes that will allow aircraft to fly more efficiently to their destinations while avoiding dangerous weather conditions and sends an alert to an airline flight dispatcher. American Airlines and the FAA have been evaluating the tool in field trials since 2012, and have found substantial savings in fuel and time.