Volpe Center Highlights - August 1999
Economic Growth and Trade
Director's Notes |
Focus |
Safety |
Mobility |
Human and Natural Environment |
Economic Growth and Trade |
National Security |
Published and Presented
Advance America's economic growth and competitiveness domestically and internationally through efficient and flexible transportation.
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Volpe Center Enhances and Operates Traffic Management System
The Traffic Management System (TMS), maintained and operated by the Volpe Center, was developed by the Volpe Center for the FAA to improve utilization of the limited capacity of the national airspace. Over the ten years that TMS has been used, Volpe Center staff have worked closely with FAA personnel to improve the tools contained in the system, such as Monitor Alert, used to provide early warning of potential areas of congestion in the airspace. Recently, the Center's staff developed a new set of improvements to Monitor Alert to permit local adaptation of the airspace, referred to as profiles. Profiles improve the modeling of flight trajectories during the ascent and descent phases of flight. Two air traffic managers from the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center visited the Volpe Center earlier this summer. Their feedback on the new tailored profiles for Monitor Alert was extremely positive. They stated that the new tailored descent profiles raised the accuracy of modeling flights through the correct airspace sector from 80% to 95%. In addition, they are planning to provide additional profiles to raise the success rate further and may also provide tailored ascent profiles.
The Volpe Center houses the TMS "Hubsite" and operates the system 24 hours per day, seven days a week. During the month of July, the Volpe Center TMS Hubsite achieved 100% success by processing all the 125 Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) issued by the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) during a month that featured an extraordinary amount of severe weather across the United States. GDPs are the most far-reaching and important traffic management tool that air traffic managers at FAA's ATCSCC in Herndon, VA, can use. GDPs are traffic management actions utilized during periods of severe weather, such as the recent national thunderstorm activity, which directly affected safety of air traffic operations. Successful execution of GDPs depends on uninterrupted TMS Hubsite operations to reallocate flight slots and departure times and to send data to FAA and airlines.
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