For the past 6 years, NASA's Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) project has been developing and testing a suite of airport operations tools known as Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) technology. Through years of field testing at Charlotte Douglas International Airport and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, these ATD-2 tools have been proven to make aviation more sustainable by saving fuel, reducing carbon emissions and improving on-time performance and dependability. Now that the ATD-2 project has been completed, NASA has transferred all of their findings to the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for implementation at airports across the nation.
NASA’s
Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) was instrumental in the development and testing of the various ATD-2 tools. Specifically, the AOL specialized in evaluating airspace solutions and human factors considerations from an operational standpoint for the ATD-2 project, with the goal of improving the reliability and efficiency of the air traffic management system in metroplex environments through the development and integration of advanced arrival, departure, and surface prediction and scheduling systems.
In the near future, the FAA will be implementing these IADS capabilities through a program called Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM), which it will deploy to 89 airports, beginning next year with deployment at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Ultimately, the full suite of advanced ATD-2 tools will be deployed to 27 of the nation’s busiest airports, thus ensuring sustainable and efficient aviation operations for future generations of air travelers.
