Goals
The main objective of the air traffic flow management is to optimize the use of the air space to cope with the increasing air traffic. Such optimization process takes into account a large number of data sources from multiple domains and of different kinds.
Approach
There are static data, known as environment data, which describe the air space and the airports. Static data have a slow update cycle: 28 days.
There are dynamic events such as descriptions of flight plans, updates of flight positions, updates of the weather conditions, updates of the airport conditions or updates of the air traffic control conditions. Dynamic events have a frequent/fast update cycle.
The role of the air traffic flow management systems (e.g. CFMU in Europe) is to process multiple CEPs so as to generate meaningful (i.e. with added value for the operator) views of the dynamic events to help the optimization of one sector of the air space or one airport.
The newly created CEPs constitute the entries to further stages of optimization: consolidate the air traffic among the neighbour sectors, optimize flight routes per flight, etc.
BPMN 2.0 process
| Start | In a crisis context, an airport must make an airplane to take-off immediately and thus, prevent every incoming airplane from landing. |
| 1: Rerouting | A decision is made to close runways and flight plans for all incoming scheduled flights need to be modified accordingly (step2). Airport ATC communicates with pilots (of incoming flights scheduled for landing at this airport) for reroute request. |
| 2: Flight plan modification | Once agreement is found on the final destination between ATC and the pilot:
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| 3: Unexpected arrival warning | The local destination Airport authority warns ground operations handlers (Airport Bus company, Luggage Handling company, Security company, etc.) of the unexpected arrival. The Airline informs warns its own local ground staff (at destination) of the arrival at their airport. |
| 4: Unexpected arrival handling | The local destination Airport authority manages stand and gate, luggage belt and customs and security allocation, in anticipation of unexpected arrival. |
| 5: Arrival management | The local destination Airport authority puts into place stand and gate management (to transport passengers by bus to gate if needed, etc.) and provides information to passengers such as luggage belt location. |
| 6: Local crisis management | The Airline ground staff makes a decision between putting the passengers on hold (for the night) until the weather conditions are restored, or directly transporting the passengers to the originally planned destination (using new flight, bus and/or rail). |
The previous table illustrates the step-by-step approach of the diagram.