Development and application of a classification system for comparing future air traffic management operational concepts

As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) moves forward with plans to evolve operations of the National Airspace System (NAS), as well as to achieve the various operational improvements described by the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Implementation Plan [1], there is an increasing need to assess a broad range of solutions in a systematic manner to determine which will prove most desirable for implementation. Discriminating between these concepts can be a difficult task because of the variability in the level of detail that exists and the different Air Traffic Management (ATM) aspects that are described. Understanding these differences is important because of their far-reaching impact to the NAS evolution path.