Cruise

Improve the Efficiency of NextGen Cruise Operations

Metron Aviation has the experience and expertise in critical areas pertaining to NextGen Cruise technologies. For example, under task order from the FAA’s Concept Engineering and Development (CED) contract, Metron Aviation conducted an extensive analysis of flexible Special Use Airspace (SUA), identifying opportunities to allocate unused militar y airspace to commercial aviation without infringing on defense requirements. Exploiting this allocation allows commercial aviation to fly preferred routes, possibly reducing NAS usage by millions of miles annually. Additionally, Metron Aviation is a key member of the Time Based Flow Management (TBFM) team tasked with evolving the FAA’s Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) capability into the NextGen environment.

On-demand SUAs is one type of Special Activity Airspace (SAA).

Another CED effort involves concept development for System Enhancements for Versatile Electronic Negotiation (SEVEN), a component of Collaborative Trajectory Options Procedures (CTOP). SEVEN enables airlines to submit Trajectory Option Sets (TOS) that represent their preferred flight plans between origin-destination pairs, and Air Traffic Control (ATC) assigns airlines their preferred routs based on capacity constraints and queue priorities. In this manner, airlines work collaboratively with ATC to maximize the overall NAS throughput and meet their own business goals.
Metron Aviation is a leader in developing Route Builder. This software automatically identifies legal, flyable routes that are as close as possible to a great-circle trajectory between an origin-destination pair. Route Builder accounts for weather, winds aloft, SUAs, and other constraints that may arise before or during a flight.

Metron Aviation is prepared and poised to advance existing cruise technologies toward full NextGen implementation. As a key member for the FAA’s Time Based Flow Management program, Metron Aviation will contribute to enhance metering of aircraft through the NAS, resulting in higher predictability in the en route stream.

Metron Aviation’s researchers are at the forefront of en route approach/departure studies at high density airports. We have published papers in peer-reviewed journals that address the aspects of super-dense operations in the airportal. These papers describe advanced techniques for designing en route descent routes, and for maximizing airportal capacity during convective weather. Metron Aviation is also a leader in the development of flow and arrival-departure corridors. These corridors are within trajectory-based airspace, and ensure that conflicts are quickly resolved with small speed or trajectory adjustments under high traffic density.