Designing on-demand coded departure routes

Coded Departure Routes (CDRs) help coordinate traffic flows around weather constraints between airports in the National Airspace System (NAS). Today, CDRs are generated far in advance of the day that they are implemented. The routes are maintained in a database and distributed between the Air Traffic Service Provider (ATSP) and the users (airlines). If the weather forecast is highly predictable, the ATSP selects the CDR that best solves a weather avoidance problem, given other traffic flow management constraints. For less predictable weather, the ATSP identifies CDRs that could be used to avoid multiple weather constraint scenarios, asks the NAS users to prepare for this full set of contingencies (alternative CDRs), and then assigns the actual route to the flight as it departs. This paper investigates a method of dynamically generating CDRs based on the latest weather forecast. The benefit of generating CDRs as needed to meet the constraints imposed by the weather forecast is that the routing solution adapts and best fits both the emergent weather pattern and traffic flow requirements. We demonstrate how such weather avoidance routes can be generated with an algorithm that takes into consideration the weather forecast and discuss relevant human factors and domain knowledge requirements.