Aeronautics: North Texas Research Station (NTX) Team Trains Operational Users to use the Collaborative Digital Departure Reroute (CDDR) System

April 2022

The NASA/Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) North Texas Research Station (NTX) team members, Keenan Roach, Manager and Senior Engineer (USRA) and Greg Juro, Air Traffic Specialist (Cavan Solutions) recently trained operational users from American Airlines, Envoy Air, Southwest Airlines, and the local FAA towers, on how to use the Trajectory Option Set (TOS) web table for the Collaborative Digital Departure Reroute (CDDR) system. The CDDR system, which will be tested later this year. uses Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to model airport departure scheduling while accounting for surface and terminal boundary constraints. The ML algorithms are more flexible than the trajectory models based on airport geometry. This will allow the new models to be applied to other airports without the overhead cost of the inherent geometric differences. This work falls under the Sustainable Aviation 1 (SA1) Demo in support of the Digital Information Platform (DIP) sub-project. 

NTX was developed and managed by NASA Ames Research Center’s Aviation Systems Division and represents more than 24 years of collaboration with the FAA on ATM research and technology transfer. NTX is located in the Dallas/Fort Worth (Texas) metroplex and primarily supports NASA Aeronautics’ ATM research efforts as well as collaborative research activities led by NASA partners. NTX is utilized in all phases of ATM research, beginning with early concept development through execution of operational field evaluations of advanced prototype systems.