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Airborne Execution of Flow Strategies (AEFS) promotes increased collaboration among National Airspace System (NAS) stakeholders. AEFS recognizes the following current problem: Air Traffic Controllers are aware of the overall air traffic and flight conditions, but lack the capability to collaboratively communicate handling preferences based on flight operators’ business needs, whereas flight operators have limited awareness of Air Traffic Control (ATC) constraints and their potential impacts on flights. By promoting methods to increase collaboration between flight operators and ATC, AEFS targets improvements in Traffic Flow Management (TFM) efficiency, situational awareness among stakeholders, and flexibility in the usage of the NAS.

The FAA conducted research and development of the AEFS concept at the Florida NextGen Test Bed (FTB) at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Daytona FL. The research team from ERAU, Metron Aviation, Lockheed Martin, Mosaic ATM, and CSSI demonstrated the AEFS operational scenarios and corresponding use cases through laboratory demonstration as well as Modeling and Simulation (M&S).

The research team conducted two M&S demonstrations: one with Future Concept Team (FCT) members as active participants in the demonstration, and second with FAA stakeholders. Airborne/Airborne; Airborne/Pre-departure; Pre-departure/Airborne; and Pre-departure/pre-departure use cases were recorded and demonstrated to the participants including one airborne/airborne use case with Trial Planning functionality. In all of the use cases, DAL flights originally had default priority 5 that was changed to the highest priority 1 for one of the flights about 10 minutes before that flight would cross the freeze horizon. Based on stakeholder feedback received during the first M&S Demonstration, the FAA demonstrated an additional use case for the second demonstration where one of the flights was instead assigned the lowest priority of 10 to observe the results.

All use cases clearly demonstrated that AEFS would act based on assigned priority reducing sequencing delay for the High Priority Flights (HPF) and increasing it for Low Priority Flights LPF(s). In most cases, more than two flights were involved: a delay from an HPF was distributed among several LPFs, or by increasing delay for an LPF, several higher priority flights were able to decrease their delays. Moreover, the demonstration showed that AEFS successfully altered the arrival sequence based on assigned priorities. Both M&S demonstrations received positive feedback from key stakeholders indicating it was helpful in providing a clearer understanding of the concept.