ATCs Traffic Monitoring In Pretty Pictures Or Text

With time travel still being science fiction and all, there arent many options for predicting the future. That hasnt stopped the government from doing their best to create software tools to do just that.

Editorial Staff

Monday, December 01, 2014 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The National Airspace System (NAS) employs software tools to predict future air traffic by calculating aircraft arrival times over various points on their flight plans.
NASA's Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) is a key planning tool for air traffic control, determining aircraft arrival numbers at specific gates and their distribution to active runways.
In addition to abstract planning tools like TMA, other programs offer literal, geographical depictions of inbound aircraft, often color-coded by destination, for enhanced situational awareness.

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With time travel still being science fiction and all, there aren’t many options for predicting the future. That hasn’t stopped the government from doing their best to create software tools to do just that.

When an aircraft departs an airport, a virtual clock on its flight plan starts running. Without getting into too much extraneous detail, the National Airspace System (NAS) computers can calculate and estimate what time it will arrive over each fix on its flight plan. This, combined with a track of the aircraft’s current position, enable facilities to predict their busy periods with a high degree of accuracy. There are a multitude of programs that convert that raw data and present it in a user-friendly fashion.