Operational Concept for Initial Integrated Collaborative Rerouting (ICR)

The Integrated Collaborative Rerouting (ICR) Concept was developed under the auspices of a Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) working group. That working group, the Future Concepts of Flow Management Sub-Team (known as the FCT), includes members from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air carriers, and business aviation, as well as private industry, academia, and aviation research organizations. One of the tools currently available for traffic flow management (TFM) in the National Airspace System (NAS) is defining and issuing reroutes to avoid potential weather and en route congestion problems. Today's reroute process is manually intensive and usually involves a one size fits all approach that is prescribed by the FAA without significant input from NAS users. ICR is an enhanced, more collaborative version of rerouting that involves customers early in the process and allows them to submit preferences for reroutes. FAA traffic managers (local and national) coordinate to define the constraint and provide more information to customers (in the form of Planning Advisories and route guidance) than they do today. Customers know their business needs and aircraft capabilities/limitations. Through the ICR process, they have the opportunity and additional automation to find reroute options for flights that avoid the constraint. The premise is that customer-submitted preferences will be accepted unless the traffic managers determine they are operationally infeasible. The FAA then deals with non-participating flights that have not rerouted themselves around the constraint. Modeling capabilities are important allowing traffic managers and customers to see the impact of proposed reroutes and creation of better reroute plans. Enhanced monitoring capabilities allow better implementation of the plan. The ICR concept addresses several areas for improvement identified in early FCT discussions concerning the rerouting process.