The FAA's Airspace Flow Program

The FAA today (23 May) released an expanded program that it says will reduce flight delays during the peak summer season. Under it airlines will have the option of either accepting delays for flights scheduled to fly through storms or flying longer routes to maneuver around them. AFP was tested in 2006 at seven locations in the Northeast. Delays dropped by 9 % compared to the year before. Savings generated by the program are expected to be around $100m annually. The program will now be exercised at an additional 11 cities in the South and Midwest. Prior to AFP, severe storms often forced the FAA to ground flights at affected airports, unnecessarily penalizing flights not scheduled to fly through them. By identifying only those flights scheduled to fly through storms and giving them estimated departure times, the FAA's new measure will ensure airports impacted by bad enroute weather can receive the maximum number of flights that can safely fly to them. During widespread storms, arrival slots often open up at short notice due to delayed or canceled flights. A new software program, called Adaptive Compression, automatically fills those slots with the next available flight. For the 10-day period around Memorial Day, the Air Transport Association predicts 21.4 million passengers worldwide will travel on U.S. airlines, up almost four percent from last year. It is expected that frustrating time delays and horror stories of passengers being trapped aboard grounded planes will be measurably reduced by the circumventions promised by AFP.