Publications

The three major New York City (NYC) air carrier airports (Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark) currently experience high delays due to adverse terminal weather, both in an absolute sense and relative to other major airport complexes. Significantly expanding the NYC airports (e.g., by adding new runways) to reduce delays is not feasible. One alternative is to provide aviation weather decision support systems to air traffic, airline, and airport operations personnel to help them operate more safely and effectively with the existing runway/taxiway complexes. Under an innovative partnership between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory has installed and is currently operating a functional prototype Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) to conduct research on improving the safety and efficiency of operations at the NYC airports during adverse weather. The New York terminal area provides a stringent test of the ITWS ability to safely reduce delays due to both the meteorology and the operational usage challenges not found at the earlier ITWS test locations of Orlando, Memphis, and Dallas. In this paper, we describe key features of the New York terminal environment and the ITWS prototype, the initial experience in addressing the meteorological and operational usage challenges of the New York terminal area, and describe plans for the coming years.