Operational incentives in Traffic Flow Management

Successful implementation of NextGen will require a critical mass of aircraft to be equipped with a range of avionics in the areas of communication, navigation, and surveillance. The equipage process has faced impediments that have slowed equipage rates below targets. It is believed that a package of financial and operational incentives can help accelerate the equipage process by incentivizing and facilitating the use of NextGen equipage. This paper focuses on Traffic Flow Management (TFM) Operational Incentives (OPIs) that can be implemented in the near-term. These incentives can help accelerate the equipage process by providing short-term benefits to early adopters until the full benefits of equipage materialize in the far term. Also, implementing equipage-aware Traffic Management Initiatives (TMIs) can enable near-term implementation of equipage-dependent concepts in a mixed-equipage environment. This, in turn, can reduce the airlines' uncertainty with respect to equipage return on investment. In this paper we conduct a high-level quantitative analysis to gain insight into the ramifications of TFM OPIs under a range of equipage levels.