Aviation Weather Avoidance Service for Four-dimensional Flight Trajectories

Harris Corporation, provider of FTI, VSCS, OASIS, and WARP systems for the FAA has developed a capability, Aviation Weather Avoidance Service (AWAS), which addresses a core weather-related functional requirement from the NextGen CONOPS: the identification of where and when aircraft can or cannot safely fly.

Trajectory-based operations are a foundational element of NextGen, and AWAS is focused on enabling better decision-making with regard to weather and flight trajectories. A four-dimensional trajectory (4DT) is a precise description of an aircraft's position in both space and time, and AWAS constantly evaluates 4DTs with respect to forecasts for thunderstorms, turbulence, icing, ceiling, and visibility. When forecast conditions exceed user-provided flight rules, the planned trajectory is considered impacted, and an alternative route that minimizes weather impacts is automatically produced and published as output, along with the degree of impact. AWAS is designed to be a discoverable service that would interface with the NextGen 4D Weather Cube via SOA publish/subscribe methodologies. Inputs include weather observation and forecast data, active and planned flight trajectories, and user-provided flight governance rules. Grid technologies are utilized to provide high-performance and high-availability processing.