Tactical convective weather decision support to complement "strategic" traffic flow management for convective weather
Summary
Delay increases during the months of the year characterized by thunderstorms have been the principal cause of the dramatic delay growth in the US aviation system over the past 3 years, as shown in Figure 1. In 2000, the key new initiative for reducing these convective weather delays was "strategic" traffic flow management (TFM) through the Collaborative Convective Forecast Product (CCFP), the Strategic Planning Team, and Collaborative Routing (CR). This "strategic" approach has been quite successful in improving operations. However, in congested airspace, the inability to accurately forecast convective weather impacts requires a complementary tactical weather decision support capability. This paper describes terminal and enroute weather prediction systems plus traffic flow management and automation decision support tools to complement the strategic approach.