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The Federal Aviation Administration's augmentation to the global positioning system for civil aviation is called the wide area augmentation system. This paper introduces the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system. This system is better optimized than the current flight inspection systems in terms of accuracy, cost, and efficiency. Although they meet the Federal Aviation Administration's flight inspection system accuracy requirements, the current flight inspection systems are either higher cost or less efficient. The innovative use of the wide area augmentation system with a radar altimeter and a television positioning system without a requirement for an inertial navigator makes it possible for the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system to have low cost and high efficiency in flight inspection for instrument landing system calibration. The wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system meets the Federal Aviation Administration's accuracy requirements for CAT III ILS calibration and also provides firm integrity algorithms. The performance of the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system is confirmed with tests using flight data taken in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A capacity-enhancing, gate-to-gate air traffic management (ATM) operational concept for the U.S. National Airspace System in 2020 is presented. The concept defines five core services for ATM: airspace, flow, traffic, separation, and information management. Flow, traffic, and separation management are the services that directly influence air traffic movement, whereas airspace management determines the physical resources available to accommodate traffic demand. Information management is a new service that provides the collection, storage, and dissemination of air traffic information throughout the system. The planning and control authority of flow, traffic, and separation management is determined using a partitioning of planning time horizons to each service. A method for assessing the benefits of these and other operational concepts is also outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research reported in this paper is motivated by the need to better understand the structure of connectivity in air transportation networks. The aim is to investigate analysis models and techniques from modern network theory as a framework to provide both characterization of network structure and a useful systems analysis approach to derive implications from both local and global topology characteristics. Recent developments in network theory establish means to quantify topological structure in a manner that may indicate expected performance and robustness. In this paper, a mathematical footing from network theory is introduced for examining transport networks in the U.S. domestic air transportation system. Using data for the 2004 travel year, the structure of the transport network (service routes between airports) and several subnetworks is exposed in terms of degree distribution, and the importance of airports is assessed through several network measures. Useful implications are drawn from measures and further analysis that directly maps these measures to system performance is presented. The general approach is found to merit further investigation as part of a larger, more comprehensive, and design-oriented systems analysis framework for air transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, airlines and other users' route choice behaviors in the national airspace system of the United States have been examined. A binary logit regression model was used to determine the choice of routes by the users employing instrument flight rules. By categorizing routes into two types--over land and over water--and using a sample of almost 98,500 observations from the Federal Aviation Administration's Enhanced Traffic Management System, it was found that operational characteristics, such as distance, commercial flights, and altitudes of the flights are critical in determining route choice. Inflationary environment, caused by sectoral jet fuel prices and overall economy-wide prices, leads to the choice of overwater routes. Busier months as well as peak times of the day lead to the choice of overwater routes. Finally, airspace redesign tends to make overwater routes more attractive vis à vis than overland routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]