RAPT hopes to reduce weather-caused airline delays
You’ve just arrived at Reagan National Airport in time to catch a flight to Boston Logan airport. You then find out that your flight has been delayed because of thunderstorms. But the storms aren’t in Washington or in Boston — they’re in New York, where your plane is parked.
Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory hope to eliminate this kind of situation by developing a computerized prediction model that will allow air traffic controllers to allow flights to take off via alternate routes which will reduce weather-related delays.
The Route Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) will assist air traffic managers in deciding whether to allow airplanes to take off during bad weather.
The computerized tool takes weather information from satellites and radar systems, makes predictions about whether a pilot would choose to fly through such conditions, and displays the information graphically to enable an air traffic controller to make a quick decision.
The display includes a grid that “lists departure times in rows, which are divided into columns of five minutes running from the present to half an hour in the future.” Each rectangle is given a color that shows how feasible it is to get flights out. “Red means the route is blocked. Yellow means there’s some heavy weather that might pose problems. Dark green says there’s weather, but that it shouldn’t be an issue. Light green represents clear sailing.”
A prototype has been used in the New York City region for about four years, with partial funding provided by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Federal Aviation Administration started funding RAPT last year and asked for a major field assessment of the system.
Richard DeLaura, one of the RAPT developers, and his colleagues, looked at the system during a field study and found they needed to make adjustments because of the human factor. Air traffic managers using the system “wanted to be sure they could trust what RAPT was telling them and needed to know why it was making certain predictions,” he says. For example, managers looked at the yellow routes and the estimated cloud tops to decide whether to release departures.
Researchers found that, in 2007, flight delays were reduced by 2300 hours. In terms of the costs of operating aircraft, plus the value of passengers’ time, that delay reduction saved $7.5 million. In the New York area alone, the system can save 8800 hours per year or $28 million in costs saved.
DeLaura and his team are also adjusting the system to take more into account arrivals who use departure corridors to avoid storms. Too many arrivals using these corridors could delay or stop departures altogether.
They’re hoping to have the system deployed at other large airports where congestion and convection causes major issues. Placing RAPT at key spots could reduce delays at both large and small airports all over the country.
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