One of the primary objectives of the 2008 NextGen Florida Demonstration Project is to integrate convective weather forecasts into TMA.

TMA is a traffic management tool used by ATC to manage excess demand to capacity constrained airspace. TMA schedules aircraft flows to the TRACON boundary that matches an airport's acceptance rate. These optimized arrival flows allow ATC to land aircraft more efficiently, increasing the landings rates.

Although TMA uses forecast winds aloft, there has been no provision within it to account for severe convective weather. Thunderstorms can force aircraft to be rerouted; the rerouting of aircraft can alter their predicted arrival times thus making TMA's scheduling less effective.

This demonstration merges convective forecasts, derived from forecasted high radar composite reflectivity into TMA every 5-minutes. This data represents severe weather as “no-fly zone” polygons which TMA treats as restricted special use airspace.

This presentation will present results of this demonstration project, including snapshots of TMA displays with and without the convective weather forecast information.