The Multi-center Tma System Architecture and Its Impact on Inter-facility Collaboration

The success of the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) system at Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and other ARTCCs has prompted the further development of TMA to address problems in the congested environment of the Northeast corridor of the US National Airspace System (NAS). This region is characterized by terminal areas whose arrivals approach from more than one ARTCC thereby requiring greater coordination in arrival traffic planning. NASA and the FAA are developing a Multi-Center Traffic Management Advisor (McTMA) tool that introduces a new infrastructure to allow individual TMA systems to communicate with each other, thereby forming a McTMA network. The prototype system allows the four ARTCCs of the northeast (New York, Washington, Boston and Cleveland) and the Philadelphia (PHL) Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility (TRACON) to share a regional view of the arrival demand at the PHL airport. This shared view will enable these facilities to proactively address PHL congestion issues through better coordination and management of traffic into an adjacent air traffic control unit, be it a sector or a facility. This paper presents a high-level description of the McTMA architecture and potential collaboration possibilities that may arise from using the system. Introduction and Background