Concept of operations for addressing types of en route hazardous weather constraints in NextGen

In this paper, we present a possible Concept of Use that addresses hazardous weather constraints in the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). Weather hazards, including the "types" of convection, turbulence, icing, and other weather effects are classified into hard and soft constraints. Hard constraints are formed by weather hazards that no aircraft can safely fly through (e.g., severe convection, turbulence or icing). Soft constraints are formed by weather hazards which some pilots or airlines decide to fly through while others do not (e.g., moderate turbulence or icing). We consider two aircraft "classes": Class 1 aircraft that avoid both hard and soft constraints, and Class 2 aircraft that avoid hard constraints but are willing to fly through soft constraints. The Concept of Use is based on a Weather Impact Interaction Grid which relates the type of weather hazard to the class of aircraft. The Weather Impact Interaction Grid and aircraft 4 Dimensional Trajectories are analyzed to identify Flow Constrained Areas (FCAs) for which traffic flow management must organize flows of traffic with restrictions placed on entry into FCAs in order to safely maximize FCA throughput. We first describe the operational environment for air traffic management in the National Airspace System in NextGen, and then the Concept of Use and Scenarios are described.