The Weather Company's New Convective Forecast Products to Inform Airline Decision-Making

Global Airspace is impacted significantly when convective weather is congested enough to block critical air traffic routes. In some high traffic regions (e.g., airspace in and near the NYC area), even scattered convection can significantly impact traffic flow. These convective impacts frequently lead to significant Air Traffic Control (ATC) delays, ground stops, and even cancellations.

The Weather Company (TWC), an IBM Business, in collaboration with American Airlines (AA), has developed, created, and implemented two new forecast products intended to assist AA in making well-informed operational decisions to predict and mitigate ATC Traffic Management Initiatives. A Gate Convective Forecast report is produced by TWC Aviation Forecasters, embedded at the American Airlines Integrated Operations Center (IOC), twice daily and forecasts the impact of thunderstorms on a terminal’s arrival or departure gates 16 hours ahead. Separately, an automated rapidly-updating Terminal Airspace Convection Risk (TrACR) product focuses on the risk convection presents to a terminal or its arrival or departure gates in the short term 0-7 hour range. TrACR is produced using forecasts from The Weather Company’s short-term Forecast On Demand (FOD) platform, which combines updates from the TWC NOWRAD radar reflectivity product, TWC’s Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecast System (IBM GRAF) and TWC human forecasters. The TrACR product is refreshed with a new forecast every 30 minutes.

This presentation will introduce both the TrACR and Gate Convective Forecast Products, highlight use cases in collaboration with AA, and suggest strengths, challenges, and enhancements needed going forward.