OEP Plan Reference Sheet NextGen RWI
Reduce Weather Impact (RWI)
Flight Plan Goal # 2 – Greater Capacity.
PW1 Objective # 1.5 – Minimize the impact of weather on the operation
PW3 Objective # 3.2 – Build capacity safely to meet demand
PW4 Objective # 4.2 – Deliver a future air traffic system that meets customers’ operational needs
The FAA has identified this program as an enabler program for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).
Background / Need:
Delays in the NAS are primarily attributable to weather. Over the last five-year period, over 70% of delays of 15 minutes or more, on average, were caused by weather. Weather also impacts safety. Between 1994 and 2003, weather was determined to be a contributing or casual factor in over 20% of all accidents. In today’s NAS, most decision tools, manual and automated, do not utilize weather information effectively or at all. This is partly due to gaps in today’s weather dissemination system; partly due to incomplete, inaccurate, and inconsistent weather forecasts; partly due to gaps and inaccuracies in weather observations used to depict current weather conditions and to support forecasts; and partly due to insufficient research in support of integration of weather information into tool development. Weather observations currently available are insufficient in spatial resolution and frequency to accurately describe current weather or to support accurate forecasts of future weather. The current weather dissemination system is inefficient. Information gathered by one system is not easily shared with other systems. This results in different decision makers having access to different weather information. This lack of a common situational awareness results in inconsistent decision making across the NAS.
Solution(s):
RWI will provide improved weather observations and forecasts, improved weather dissemination capability, and weather information tailored for integration into cockpit and traffic management decision support systems. Improvements will be made in observing and forecasting weather parameters key to conducting safe and efficient operations, for example convective weather, turbulence, and icing. The dissemination system will provide network access to weather information from distributed weather information sources around the globe.
These capabilities will provide the improved weather information needed by NextGen and provide a common weather picture across the national airspace system. This information will allow operations to be proactively planned based on the predicted impact, rather than attempting to mitigate impacts once the weather has changed.
- Activities in the near term will focus on: developing a concept of use and initial requirements for weather dissemination; preparing for and conducting a weather dissemination interoperability demonstration; developing a concept of use and requirements for weather information needed by manual and automated traffic management and cockpit decision support tools; assessing gaps and redundancies in the current aviation weather observation networks; development of a pre-prototype multifunction phased array radar; and development of improved forecasts (e.g., convection, turbulence, icing).
Operational Benefits:
RWI improves all aspects of the aviation weather system including observations, forecasts, dissemination, and information for use in the cockpit and automated decision support tools, the value of which hinges on developing automated decision-support tools that help mitigate the effects of weather in the NAS. All users will access data from a common source which will promote a common situational awareness and enable collaborative and dynamic NAS decision making. Traffic management planning will be enhanced and traffic capacity increased due to improved forecasts, and route planning by pilots and Aircraft Operation Centers will be similarly enhanced.
Planned efforts will reduce costs through consolidation of weather processors and observation systems.
Better weather information integrated into controller decision support tools will improve the quality of controller decisions and greatly reduce controller workload during bad weather.
Wake vortex transport prediction increase capacity by allowing reduced aircraft spacing on closely spaced parallel runways.
