Adaptive Compression

Increases airport capacity while reducing departure delays

Adaptive Compression (AC) became operational in the fall of 1998 and is the first fully automatic Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) operation to be deployed in the National Airspace System (NAS). AC is a process that, for every active Ground Delay Program (GDP) and Airspace Flow Program (AFP), continually scans all available flight information, looking for potential inefficiencies, while issuing corrective actions at appropriate times to ensure maximum efficiency is maintained.

While each airline is responsible for managing their own arrival slots, so that cancelled flights do not affect capacity, carriers fall short in this action. For preventative measures, AC continually monitors such flights and if an arrival opportunity is about to be lost, AC will move another flight’s assigned arrival time earlier into the arrival slot, maintaining and even increasing capacity. The delayed or cancelled flight’s assigned arrival time is moved later to keep it available to the carrier for further management. AC does all this on a “just-in-time basis,” minimizing any possible interference with the carrier’s planned operations. Additional AC functionalities monitor flight information for delayed departures, flights delayed en route and flights that never operate. These events are used as opportunities to move other flights earlier, maximizing capacity usage and minimizing delays.

Since its operational introduction in 1998, AC has reduced delays by 47 million minutes, saving $4.8 billion to-date. This is accomplished with minimal changes to ATFM automation and reduces workload for traffic managers and flight operators.