THE FUTURE NATIONAL AIRSPACE SYSTEM: DESIGN REQUIREMENTS IMPOSED BY WEATHER CONSTRAINTS

In this paper, we present design requirements for the future National Airspace System (NAS) focusing on the most fundamental constraint imposed on this system – namely, the effects of weather. We begin by performing a problem-space analysis in order to classify weather related problems across NAS domains: surface, terminal, and en route. We then identify a set of core ideas that address many of the weather constraints in these domains. The core ideas include flexible traffic management, coupled traffic and weather prediction, and human factors issues that relate to establishing and maintaining common situation awareness between the various decision makers in the NAS. From these core ideas, we discuss a set of functional requirements for the future NAS to enable it to be more robust to the impact of weather and its uncertainty on capacity.