A Simulation Testbed for Dynamic Air Corridors within the Next Generation Air Transportation System

The key innovation in this effort is the development of a simulation testbed for identifying dynamic air corridors that can increase aircraft throughput in and around the terminal airspace. In this proposal, an air corridor is a three-dimensional region of space that is intended to safely isolate a stream of aircraft from other aircraft outside the corridor. Air corridors/routes effectively exist today in two forms: static and dynamic. Static air corridors exist in the form of published standard arrival routes (STAR) and standard instrument departures (SID). Dynamic air corridors are effectively created when air traffic control (ATC) issues vector and speed instructions to aircraft. The proposed testbed would identify dynamic air corridors that provide ATC with more options that are optimized to provide greater throughput than is currently available with today's static air corridors. The testbed would continuously identify dynamic air corridors in order to adapt to changing hazards, changing queues of arriving and departing aircraft, and changing runway configurations. We further propose integrating the simulation testbed with NASA's Airspace Concept Evaluation Software (ACES) in order to assess the impact of dynamic air corridors on the entire U.S. national airspace.