Defining and Measuring Aircraft Delay and Airport Capacity Thresholds (2014)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

56 A P P E N D I X A Delay Database Summary Data Base Purpose for the Data Collection and Analysis Who Reports the Data (or How Is It Collected) What Data Is Reported Differentiate between Raw Data vs. Any Data That Is Calculated TFMS (Traffic Flow Management System) TFMS is a data exchange system for supporting the management and monitoring of national air traffic flow The FAA’s airspace lab assembles TFMS flight messages into one record per flight TFMS processes all available data sources such as flight-plan messages, flight-plan amendment messages, and departure and arrival messages. The FAA’s airspace lab assembles TFMS flight messages into one record per flight. TFMS is restricted to the subset of flights that fly under IFR and are captured by the FAA’s en route computers. All VFR and some non en route IFR traffic is excluded. TFMS includes information about commercial traffic (air carriers and air taxis), GA, and military to and from every landing facility, as well as fixes in the U.S. and in nearby countries that participate in the TFMS system. Due to limited radar coverage and incomplete messaging, TFMS may exclude certain flights that do not enter the en route airspace and other low-altitude flights. In addition, of the 35,000 location The TFMS data provides the capability to calculate types of operations (arrival, departure, or overflight for en route centers), terminal operations counts (arrivals, departures, and overflights) and instrument operations (primary, secondary, and over) on a flight- specific basis. In addition, for the en route and oceanic environment, it is also possible to derive the time within the center’s airspace, actual distance flown within the center’s airspace, and the great-circle route distance between the entry and exit point of the center’s airspace. identifiers reported over time, only the top few thousand, accounting for over 95% of traffic, are reliable. The others are waypoints or other references to locations not associated with an airport. PDARS (Performance Data Analysis and Reporting System) Provides ATC decisionmakers at the facility level with a comprehensive set of tools and methods for monitoring the health, performance, and safety of day-to-day ATC operations Collaboration between the FAA and the NASA; collection of radar data; developed by ATAC Corporation It collects data every 2 seconds from Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) and Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities (TRACONs). PDARS’ raw data produce information such as the type of operation, aircraft identification, and actual runway threshold time. On the airport PDARS software calculates a range of performance measures, including traffic counts, travel times, travel distances, traffic flows, and in-trail separations. It turns these measurement data into information useful to FAA facilities through an architecture that features (1) automatic collection and analysis of level, a significant part of information lies in the information on aircraft-runway assignments. All TFMS data are included, consisting of the following flights: the subset of flights that fly under IFR captured by the FAA’s en radar tracks and flight plans, (2) automatic generation and distribution of daily morning reports, (3) sharing of data and reports among facilities, and (4) support for exploratory and causal analysis.

57 route computers. All VFR and some non en route IFR traffic are excluded. Delay measurements are indirectly calculated when compared against the OAG databases. Data Base Purpose for the Data Collection and Analysis Who Reports the Data (or How Is It Collected) What Data Is Reported Differentiate between Raw Data vs. Any Data That Is Calculated ASPM (Aviation System Performance Metrics) To report on the performance of approximately 29 airlines serving the 77 ASPM airports. Data is collected from the following sources: ETMS, ARINC, Innovata, ASQP, Unimpeded Taxi Times, Operational Information System (OIS), Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS) Original data obtained automatically by sensors for gate out, wheels-off, wheels-on, and gate in times. ASPM flight records fall into two groupings: efficiency counts and metrics counts. Metrics counts also exclude most GA and military flights, as well as records for international flights that only include data associated with the arrival or departure to/from a U.S. airport. Flight cancellations and diversions are excluded from both efficiency and metrics counts. Calculated data for: 1 Actual gate out time, 2. Actual gate in time, 3. Actual wheels-off time, 4. Actual wheels-on time, 5. Average taxi-out time and average taxi-in time, 6. Unimpeded taxi-in time, 7. Unimpeded taxi-out time, and 8. Matching flight schedule data to flights in ETMS. Metrics computed in ASPM are developed comparing actual time to scheduled time or flight-plan time. Taxi delays are determined based on unimpeded times. Delays are calculated for: • % on-time gate departures, • % on-time gate arrivals, • Taxi-out delay, • Taxi-in delay, • Gate delay, and • Block delay. OPSNET (Operations Network) OPSNET is the official source of NAS air traffic operations and delay data. The data collected through OPSNET is used to analyze the performance of the FAA’s ATC facilities. Data come from observations by FAA ATC personnel who manually record the number of aircraft delayed 15 minutes or more relative to nominal or unimpeded taxi-out and taxi-in times established for each airport. The data cover nonstop scheduled-service flights between points within the United States. The types of flights included are IFR, VFR; commercial traffic (air carriers and air taxis), GA, and military; arrivals, departures, and overflights; domestic and international. Data are available since January 1995. The following data are recorded: • Airport operations: IFR itinerant and VFR itinerant operations (arrivals and departures) and local operations as reported by ATC tower. Does not include overflights. • Tower operations: IFR and VFR itinerant operations (arrivals and departures), overflights, and local operations worked by the tower. OPSNET provides information about reportable delays provided daily through FAA’s Air Traffic Operations Network (OPSNET). A reportable delay recorded in OPSNET is defined in FAA Order 7210.55F as, “Delays to instrument flight rules (IFR) traffic of 15 minutes or more, which result from the ATC system detaining an aircraft at the gate, short of the runway, on the runway, on a taxiway, or in a holding configuration anywhere en route, must be reported. The IFR controlling facility must ensure delay reports are received and entered into OPSNET.” These OPSNET delays are caused by the application of initiatives by the TFM in response to weather conditions, increased traffic volume, runway conditions, equipment outages, and other causes. • TRACON operations: IFR and VFR itinerant operations and overflights worked by the TRACON. • Total terminal operations: Total operations worked by any facility. If facility has a

58 Data Base Purpose for the Data Collection and Analysis Who Reports the Data (or How Is It Collected) What Data Is Reported Differentiate between Raw Data vs. Any Data That Is Calculated tower and a TRACON, the total terminal operations is a sum of the tower operations and the TRACON operations for that facility. • Center aircraft handled: Domestic and oceanic departures, overflights, and total aircraft handled. • Facility information: Name, type, region, state, hours of operation, etc. ASQP (Airline Service Quality Performance) To provide information about airline on-time performance, flight delays, and cancellations. Based on data filed by airlines each month with the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Airlines provide data by flight for airlines that carry at least 1% of all domestic passengers (historically from 10-20 carriers). Data reported: • Gate arrival and departure data, • Wheels-off times, • Wheels-on times, and • Carriers also report the causes of delay for delayed flights (carrier-related, extreme weather, NAS, security, and late arriving aircraft). The data are available from June 2003 and are updated monthly. ASQP provides data such as departure, arrival, and elapsed flight times as shown by the OAG, the carrier’s CRS, and the carrier’s actual performance; selected differences among the three sources, such as delay and elapsed time difference; and the causes of delays. BTS (Bureau of Transportation Statistics) aviation- delay-related databases) BTS Airline on-time data are reported each month to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), BTS by the 16 U.S. air carriers that have at The selected U.S. air carriers provide the data for nonstop scheduled-service flights between points within the United States (including U.S. territories). Derived data: All and late flights (total number, average departure delay, average taxi-out, and average scheduled departure) and late flights (total and least 1% of total domestic scheduled- service passenger revenues, plus 2 other carriers that report voluntarily. Original data: • Origin airport, • Destination airport, • Origin and destination airport, • Airline, and • Flight number. percent of diverted and cancelled flights).