The Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a requirement to develop a new system to provide Traffic Flow Management (TFM) services to the National Airspace System (NAS). This new system, Flow Management Data and Services (FMDS), will replace the FAA’s current Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS).

The FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), which can be accessed at https://www.faa.gov/nextgen, provides the vision and roadmap for modernizing the National Airspace System (NAS) to meet future air traffic demands. The execution of this plan involves the research, development, and deployment of new Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems, technologies, and decision support tools to meet these growing demands safely and efficiently. The FAA works in cooperation with the airlines and other NAS users to implement Traffic Flow Management (TFM) programs to reduce delays to ensure smooth and efficient traffic flow through FAAcontrolled airspace, thereby saving the flying public and airlines millions of dollars per year in avoided delay. The FAA’s Air Traffic Systems Decision Support Systems Program Office is responsible for developing and deploying technology to support the safe and efficient movement of aircraft through the NAS and ensuring that new TFM systems and technologies provide NAS-Level benefits in addition to providing localized benefits within a particular volume of airspace or phase of flight.

The TFMS provides information processing support for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Traffic Management personnel as they coordinate the use of the NAS and respond to conditions of excess demand. TFMS receives information on planned and active flights, generates forecasts of demand from current time to several hours forward, presents this information to Traffic Management personnel, and provides automation support for the Traffic Management Initiatives to resolve or ameliorate congestion. TFMS provides information to other Air Traffic Organization (ATO) automation systems, Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) users, Flight Operations Centers (FOCs) such as Airline Operations Centers (AOC), and other consumers of Traffic Flow Management (TFM) data. TFMS supports advanced planning for anticipated adverse or restrictive conditions. It supports post-event analysis and evaluation of actions taken. TFMS archives the information it receives, making it available for researchers and developers. It collects and distributes metrics on the use of the NAS.

• FMDS will provide a reliable TFM automation system using a modernized architecture that will increase reliability and reduce response time compared to TFMS. A microservices architecture will provide the FAA with increased flexibility to implement capabilities, leveraging enterprise services, and support future enhancements. Functions needed by multiple applications (and automation systems) will be implemented as shared services. This will avoid duplication of functions and data across services, applications, and automation systems, which will simplify development and maintenance. A modernized architecture will also improve the processes for providing system support, by providing increased visibility into system and component performance to prevent system failures
• TFM automation system functions will be implemented in a streamlined interface that will improve the user experience via an integrated situation awareness display application. The improved performance of FMDS in conjunction with a new, consolidated application suite will allow traffic managers to view all traffic, TMIs, and weather in one integrated application, allowing for more proactive and efficient execution of TFM actions. Today, traffic managers collect information electronically but manually log it. FMDS will support automated logging of common information, reducing traffic manager workload associated with entering duplicate data across disparate applications. Automated logging will also make it easier for traffic managers to share information with multiple facilities, improving situational awareness
• Post-event analysis will be supported by an expansive, searchable datastore of the data FMDS presents to users, data exchanged among FMDS users/facilities, and data exchanged among the underlying software services and automation systems. The datastore will support better understanding of NAS events and their impacts on operations.  Additionally, the datastore enables improved replay capabilities
• FMDS will use NAS enterprise services and standard industry data formats where appropriate to minimize the number of different data structures utilized and duplicate functionality across systems. This will allow for simplified internal maintenance and updates and will ease data sharing across NAS automation systems