A Concept for Tactical Reroute Generation, Evaluation and Coordination

A concept is described that enables traffic managers to efficiently develop and coordinate tactical reroutes around convective weather, facilitating incremental decision making. Tactical reroutes are more precise and efficient than strategic ones, since weather predictions improve as look-ahead time decreases. Currently, tactical rerouting is prohibitively labor intensive as there is little automation assistance to identify flights projected to be affected by weather, to choose appropriate reroutes, and to coordinate them. In the United States, electronic means will soon be available for coordinating reroutes between traffic managers and en route controllers, making tactical rerouting a much more viable option for traffic managers. The Tactical Rerouting concept presented here takes advantage of this technology, and adds decision support capabilities that together increase throughput near a weather constraint and thereby reduce the need for larger scale, strategic Traffic Management Initiatives that frequently produce unnecessary delays.