Miles-In-Trail with Passback Restrictions for Use in Air Traffic Management

NASA has developed a unique innovation to compute passed back spacing requirements in air traffic management. The air traffic managers of the National Airspace System (NAS) in the United States regularly implement various Traffic Management Initiatives (TMI) to handle traffic in a safe and efficient manner. One such initiative is the Miles-in-Trail restriction. Imposed Miles-in-Trail is the value of spacing required between aircraft flying along a certain path. They help air traffic managers control the flow of aircraft into and out of an air traffic control facility. Miles-in-Trail can be implemented independently or in conjunction with other TMIs (e.g., a severe weather avoidance plan route, or a Playbook route). This model computes passback restrictions given the imposed constraint, the start and end times, the boundaries at where those restrictions need to be passed back, and the amount of maximum ground and airborne delay allowed.