Implementing relevant performance measures for traffic flow management

The FAA/NWS joint Traffic Flow Management Weather Requirements Working Group (TRWG) is working collaboratively to improve aviation weather services to Traffic Flow Management (TFM) through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Middle Operating Capability (MOC). A fundamental part of this effort is to establish a baseline of NWS weather support to TFM.

Before new products and services can be developed for TFM, NWS and FAA need a clear understanding of current weather support. As a part of TRWG, the FAA established a base set of weather products and services used by TFM in support of decision-making. Using this base set of information and without a clear set of TFM performance requirements, the TRWG Baseline Team determined that, to adequately baseline existing services, they would need to employ a phased approach. The first phase would outline the existing NWS products and services using existing verification tools and performance measures as they are gathered today. Using new baseline performance requirements, the second phase will compare existing NWS products and services to the new performance requirements including lead time, timing errors, and location errors. This comparison will lead the TRWG in developing an implementation plan to meet TFM weather support requirements through NextGen MOC.