The Department of Transportation is re-opening the Holiday Express lanes created last Thanksgiving and Christmas, as part of its efforts to address delays this summer. It cut a new agreement with the Department of Defense to make four routes available off the eastern seaboard for commercial airline flights which started at 6 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 23rd through 7 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 27th. Delays in the U.S. amount to approximately $10 billion in delay costs each year.
The new routes, in the Virginia Capes Area routes designed for use in military airspace, are part of what the FAA calls New Playbook Routes, 19 pre-coordinated routes developed to route aircraft around convective weather, which are scheduled to be in place this summer to provide alternate route options during severe weather. “Even though we can’t manage the weather, this program allows us to work around weather conditions and keep traffic moving,” said acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell.
In announcing the new routes, DOT Secretary Mary Peters also noted that the agency was putting in place a year-old program, known as Adaptive Compression that cuts delays by using advanced software to scan airports for unused take off and landing slots. She added that the FAA was also continuing to make a number of new airspace routes available in the New York region to help address chronic aviation backups in the region.
FAA announced that a new software program in March 2007 and recently said it saved airlines $27 million and 1.1 million delay minutes in its first year of operation. Open slots are filled with the next available flight, minimizing passenger delays by maximizing operations at constrained airports. Developed in collaboration with the airlines, it updates slot assignments without adding to controller workload. Controllers are automatically notified of open slots and the next available flights, rather than having to perform those functions manually.
“This software pays an immediate dividend to passengers,” said Sturgell. “When a plane can’t land because of weather, the software makes it possible for that slot to be filled automatically by another plane. This means that we’re able to get passengers where they want to go as soon as possible.”
Still, domestic flight delays cost the industry and passengers $40.7 billion in 2007, according to the Joint Economic Committee, which released a report last week. The report said passengers lost an estimated $12 billion worth of time that would otherwise have been spent on business or other endeavors. The delays cost airlines $19.1 billion in extra staffing, fuel and maintenance costs, including $1.6 billion in fuel costs.
FAA also created the Western Atlantic Route System, which includes parts of Miami and New York high altitude airspace, as well as the San Juan Center Radar Approach Control airspace, and affords a reduction in lateral separation from 90 to 50 miles for aircraft with avionics that provide the appropriate accuracy. This initiative takes advantage of more precise aircraft position technology to allow for more Atlantic routes, 20 more transition route fixes and ultimately more access to the available airspace. The agency began using the new procedures on April 1 and they are scheduled to be fully operational on June 5.
The agency introduced the Integrated Collaborative Rerouting Tool, a new automated tool that depicts constrained airspace to airlines and other users and allows pilots to alert FAA of their preferred routing around constrained areas like storms earlier. This alleviates the need for the FAA to implement required reroutes and gives the airlines scheduling options and a more efficient utilization of the available airspace.
These initiatives are coupled with the Adaptive Airspace Flow Programs (AFPs), introduced in 2006, which enabled the FAA to adjust to changing weather patterns, crucial during the summer convective weather season when storms grow rapidly and move across large swaths of the country. This summer, the FAA can adjust the parameters of an AFP based on changing weather intensity, providing a more effective way to manage traffic during severe summer storms that will minimize delays. Using AFPs, the FAA is able to target only those flights that are expected to encounter severe weather. The targeted flights are issued an Expect Departure Clearance Time, giving airlines the option to accept a delayed, but predictable departure time, to take a longer route to fly around the weather or to make alternate plans. Last summer a total of 58 AFPs were used, saving approximately $68 million for the airlines, the FAA said.

FAA Names Senior VP to Oversee Modernization
Vicki Cox was named senior vice president of NextGen and Operations Planning for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Cox, who previously served as a vice president in the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, will lead the effort to transform the nation’s airspace system by using 21st century technologies to meet changing aviation demands, known as NextGen. Some of these modernization activities have already begun, including the initial deployment of satellite-based technology, airspace redesign and runway safety improvements.
“Given the aviation community's increasing need for faster modernization of our air traffic control system, we must implement NextGen at a quicker pace,” said Acting FAA Administrator Robert A. Sturgell. “The FAA is putting an emphasis on near- and mid-term implementation, while the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) continues its focus on long-term research and development, and cross-agency cooperation.”
In addition to providing increased focus on the modernization of the nation's air traffic control system through the NextGen plan, the position will incorporate the JPDO, which helps coordinate the efforts of several federal departments and agencies, including the Departments of Transportation (which includes the FAA), Defense, Commerce and Homeland Security, as well as NASA. The combined JPDO’s long-term planning efforts and the FAA’s short- and mid-term work ensures the FAA’s research, development and testing resources are working together to deliver NextGen technologies faster.