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Abstract

A method is presented for managing, in real time, the arrival and departure of a plurality of aircraft to and/or from a specified system resource (e.g., an airport, gate, section of airspace) or set of system resources based upon consideration of the surrounding weather conditions, specified data regarding the system resource and the plurality of aircraft and their operational and safety goals. This method comprises the steps of: (a) collecting and storing the specified data and weather conditions, (b) processing the specified data and weather conditions to predict the aircraft's arrival fix times, (c) using these predicted arrival fix times to compute the value of a specified goal function which is a measure of how well the aircraft will meet their safety and operational goals if they achieve the predicted arrival fix times, (d) optimizing the goal function with respect to the predicted arrival fix times by identifying potential temporal changes in the predicted arrival fix times so as to better optimize the value of the goal function, (e) translating these temporal changes into a new set of targeted arrival fix times or enroute speeds as necessary to meet the targeted arrival fix times for the aircraft, (f) communicating the new targeted arrival fix times or enroute speeds as necessary to meet the targeted arrival fix times to the aircraft so that these temporal changes may be implemented, (g) monitoring the system resource capacity, aircraft and weather to identify predicted changes in the targeted arrival fix times or system resource capacity which will result in a specified decrease in the value of the optimized goal function, and (h) if such monitoring identifies that the specified decrease in the value of the optimized goal function is predicted to occur, repeat the above steps.

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First Claim