NASA is developing air traffic control methodology designed to safely increase the number of airplanes that can land on the same runway at busy airports by more precisely managing the time between each aircraft arrival.

Under Flight Deck Interval Management (FIM), air traffic controllers, relying on their experience and existing tools, determine the ideal spacing distance between aircraft as they approach the airport. A controller then contacts the pilots of a particular aircraft, informing them of that spacing, the trajectory the aircraft should fly and the ID of the aircraft ahead of them.

FIM screens will display the speed that pilots should fly so they can follow the aircraft ahead of them at a safe distance all the way down to the runway. Image credit: NASA.The pilots then enter this information into FIM—a combination of NASA-developed software with commercially available off-the-shelf hardware that connects to the aircraft’s onboard information and navigation systems—which then computes a solution with the help of input from the airplane’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) unit. ADS-B is a satellite-based navigation tool that allows pilots to know where they and other ADS-B-equipped aircraft are at all times.

The result is a number displayed on FIM screens for the pilots to see that tells them what speed to fly so they can follow the specified aircraft a safe distance in front of them all the way down to the runway.

At the heart of FIM is NASA software called Airborne Spacing for Terminal Arrival Routes (ASTAR), which was successfully demonstrated in 2014 flying aboard Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator 787 aircraft. During those proof-of-concept flight tests, ASTAR was operated on a laptop by a NASA engineer located in the main cabin of the airplane, who then radioed the speed commands to pilots in the cockpit.

In field demonstrations of FIM involving NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the airline industry to be conducted in early 2017, ASTAR will be loaded into commercially available hardware—essentially flight-hardened and certified personal tablets—that will be installed on the flight deck in plain view of the pilots. The demonstration will take place over Seattle and encompass three different aircraft: a Falcon 900 jet, a Boeing 737 and a Boeing 757.