Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight
A capability of cooperative and coordinated flight operations founded on a platform of secure digital information exchange, distributed authority, and intelligent onboard automation for flight path management in four dimensions (lateral, vertical, & time) to promote ubiquitous, safe, seamless, and efficient airspace utilization for all operators and with flexible architectures that enable operators to achieve their unique and diverse mission objectives with minimal restriction.
Operate From Anywhere
A substantial expansion of the locations and operational conditions under which vehicles can access the National Airspace System, including expanded use of the nation’s existing uncontrolled aerodromes and flexible creation of new temporary and permanent aerodromes with minimal required permanent infrastructure, and support for low-visibility and high demand operations.
In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance
A broad range of safety systems that proactively mitigate risks and demonstrate innovative solutions while ultimately ensuring safety to the community on the ground and in the airspace, employing services, functions, and capabilities that perform comprehensive monitoring and communication of the aviation system state, assessment of elevated risks, and mitigation actions to assure safety.
Micro-Services for Flight Operators
A diverse marketplace of appropriately authorized service providers distributed throughout the aviation ecosystem supporting flight operations with a wide range of micro-services to meet the varied needs of each operator in the local airspace.
Data and Decision Support Marketplace
A data-and-reasoning fabric providing an open virtual ecosystem of secured software infrastructure, tools, protocols, governance and policies to implement, manage and operate data sharing and reasoning services across the entire span of mobility for real-time decision support.
Digital Airspace
A capability of airspace and air traffic management founded on a platform of digital information and automation to promote safe, seamless, and flexible airspace utilization for all operators and considers airspace constraints dynamically by digital means to ensure system performance and safety.
We envision two community groups, day of use and contributing. Contributing stakeholders perform research, development, and implementation to ensure the day of use stakeholders are successful.
Day of Use Stakeholders
Contributing Stakeholders
Planning
A community organization plans a one-off event for a specific venue and date and reaches out to flight operators to rapidly ramp-up appropriate air transportation to regional aerodromes (airports, vertiports, etc.) nearby.
Operators quickly identify enough existing aerodromes accessible through Operate from Essentially Anywhere, Anytime. The aerodromes enable additional ad-hoc capabilities to support a flexible and diverse set of vehicle types providing transportation for the anticipated scale of attendance.
Prospective attendees log into the event website just hours ahead of the event and select the air transportation option that best fits their time schedule, departing location, and special assistance needs. Operators coordinate the requests by brokering support through various Micro-Services for Flight Operators.
Operation
Operators leverage Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight to navigate to their respective landing sites efficiently and safely. An unexpected spike in spontaneous late event registrations is readily handled via the ability to scale up airspace operations quickly and safely in the regional vicinity, enabled through In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance.
Intelligent and Adaptive Automation capabilities help ensure traffic complexity remains manageable in the evolving airspace. Operators monitor weather events through the connected Data and Decision Support Marketplace.
Digital Airspace coordinates the arrivals converging upon the local flight destinations through a locally enabled time-based metering system. Through coordination between field operators and on-board precision-arrival capabilities utilizing Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight, the large number of event participants are flown to their designated landing sites.
Success
Travelers arrive at the event on time, refreshed by utilizing the air transportation best suited to their schedule and needs.
Operations are conducted safely and in a manner that minimizes the impact of the event on the local community.
The same process is used again to allow travelers to depart safely and efficiently after the event concludes.
The ramped-up operational support is quickly and efficiently ramped down, and the landing sites near the event venue return to normal operational levels.
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