Air traffic (flow) management: Issues, challenges, and research opportunities

Air Traffic Management is the overall collection of the air traffic system's management processes that support the ultimate goal of safe, efficient, and expeditious aircraft movement. Because the growth of demand has not been supported by a corresponding development of the air traffic system, the need for a more efficient use of capacity is imperative. In response to this need, prominent initiatives have been launched to modernise the Air Traffic Management system. In this paper, I provide an overview of some of the issues, challenges and research opportunities that are relevant to the analytics community in order to deploy a more flexible, resilient and scalable air transport system than today's. In particular, I will focus on Air Traffic Flow Management and issues related to i) wider participation of the airspace users in the decision process; ii) a higher degree of interaction among the different "ATM function" thus providing a seamless solution to air traffic management; and iii) a paradigm shift from the airways system to free airspace.