“Airspace Playbook”: Dynamic Airspace Reallocation Coordinated with the National Severe Weather Playbook

The Airspace Playbook is a set of airspace configuration scenarios that augment the National Severe Weather Playbook rerouting scenarios. Each rerouting “play” would be accompanied with a candidate dynamic airspace reconfiguration. Typically, this would involve adjustments of sector boundaries in increments of existing sector components. Occasionally, these reconfigurations may combine two or more sectors into larger sectors or form dedicated smaller sectors to handle specific flows. The Airspace Playbook concept was examined using the distribution of the average sector occupancy counts during good-weather days and during weather-impacted days when specific rerouting “plays” were used. The sector occupancy count metric is used as an initial proxy for sector workload. Accordingly, airspace re-sectorization “plays” that accompany the rerouting “plays” are developed. The study shows that applying these dynamic sector boundary adjustments that complement reroutes can produce more evenly distributed occupancy counts in affected sectors and also lower their peak traffic load, an indicator of improved workload distribution.