Commercial aviation delays are estimated to cost airlines over $3 billion per year.  Passengers are directly affected by missed flight connections, missed meetings, and loss of personal time.  There are approximately 20 congested airports, each averaging over 20,000 hours of flight delay per year.  Delays are likely to increase as passenger travel demand continues to recover and rise.  One of DOT’s challenges is to ensure the optimal levels of safety and security for the national aviation system, while adding the least amount of “friction” which is a cause of delay.

Performance Goal:

DOT seeks to improve on-time arrival performance by one percentage point per year through increases in aviation system capacity via improved technology, collaborative actions, and airport construction.

Performance measure:

# Preliminary estimate

 

External Factors: Delays throughout the National Airspace System (NAS) are generally the result of air traffic density and adverse weather.  As traffic increases throughout the system, delays are likely to increase.  Decisions by air carriers to concentrate operations in one or more hub airports or change their business models to more evenly distribute direct flights, changing consumer demand for air travel, rapid population growth in urban centers, physical configurations of airports and terminals, and environmental considerations can either saturate or limit the ability to move aircraft to and from airports, and through congested airspace.  Security induced flight delays may prove to be a significant variable.

Strategies and Initiatives to Achieve 2004 Target: DOT resources attributable to this performance goal are depicted below:

 

About two-thirds of the FY 2004 funding associated with reducing aviation delays is contained in FAA’s Airport Improvement Program appropriation, and the remaining one-third is from FAA’s Facilities and Equipment appropriation.  FAA’s service improvements designed to reduce delays will focus in four inter-related areas:

▪          working with airlines and airports in planning airlines’ operations at congested hubs;

▪          airspace system modernization and shortening the time it takes to approve plans and build additional runways;

▪          insertion of specific technologies to improve airspace throughput capacity; and

▪          improved information and decision making processes.

Capacity benchmarks and joint FAA-airline flight
decision-making combine to optimize flight
scheduling at busiest air hubs

FAA developed capacity benchmarks for 31 of the busiest U.S. airports to provide individual measures of peak capacity. Comparing actual aircraft handled to capacity benchmarks provides FAA with a measure of their efficiency in handling aircraft and information about how well FAA is preventing delays.  Joint FAA-airline decision-making on flight movements allows a cost-effective approach to be taken in coping with weather and other delays.  Airlines can provide their preferences for routing and departure order of aircraft, so that the impact of delays can be minimized.

Technology insertion and enhanced information tools

FAA will continue installing air traffic automation enhancements such as the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) at planned Air Route Traffic Control Centers serving the major hubs.  Controllers and air traffic managers use TMA to increase airport arrival efficiency and minimize delays in giving landing clearance.

FAA is installing and improving two major systems to improve weather reporting, processing, and dissemination.  The Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) ($13.2 million) consolidates information from several sources, which will then be provided to airport towers to assist in managing weather delays.  The Weather and Radar Processor (WARP) ($8.5 million) will report weather information and integrate weather radar data provided to the FAA centers for efficient routing of aircraft.  FAA is continuing to implement and improve existing weather sensors such as Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) ($10.6 million), Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) ($7.2 million), the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, a wind shear detection channel for the terminal radar ($3.9 million), and the Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) ($11.8 million).

FAA has implemented and is evaluating an experimental demonstration program called Collaborative Convective Forecast Product (CCFP) at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC).  It provides a single forecast of thunderstorm and severe weather phenomenon, so NAS users can coordinate a system-wide approach to severe weather events.  The FAA and the NAS operators have agreed to adopt the CCFP as the official forecast tool for planning purposes.

Operational process improvements and airspace redesign

As part of its collaborative efforts to reduce delays, the FAA has created a special data system, Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM), to provide metrics comparing actual versus scheduled performance by the phase of a flight.  ASPM data contain, among other things, actual and scheduled arrivals and departures by air carriers by airport, and the actual acceptance and departure rates by airport.  The acceptance and departure rates reflect the arrivals and departures that can occur, based on standard air traffic management practices. The best employment of available ground resources (e.g., airport runways and taxiways, landing and take-off procedures, and air traffic personnel and equipment) will be the major driver in achieving the highest available airport efficiency rates.

FAA supplementary performance measures:

* Through 2002, these supplementary measures encompassed 32 large hub airports.  From 2003 onward, these measures encompass 35 airports covered by FAA’s Operational Evolution Plan.