Digital Flight Rerouting Capability Tech Transfer

Digital Flight Rerouting Capability
The Air Traffic Management and Safety (ATMS) Project, as part of NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP), developed and evaluated the Digital Flight Rerouting Capability. The team is transferring the capability to the FAA and airline partners for further evaluation, system integration, procedure development, and implementation.
Today, when bad weather forces a reroute, airlines and FAA controllers negotiate by voice, one flight at a time, under time pressure, with no shared picture of what’s available. NASA, FAA, and three major U.S. airlines changed that. Together they built, deployed, and operationally validated the Digital Flight Rerouting Capability— a cloud-based system that puts airline dispatchers and air traffic controllers on the same digital picture, automates reroute candidate identification, and handles coordination messaging end-to-end.
Over four years of live operations across the North Texas Metroplex (DFW, DAL) and Houston airspace (IAH), the results were unambiguous: each rerouted flight saved close to one hour of aggregate metroplex delay and cut passenger delay costs by tens of thousands of dollars per event. At the Houston I90 TRACON alone, the system identified 3,870 reroute candidates in FY25 and achieved a 62% airline approval rate — with departure runway predictions exceeding 90% accuracy and departure time predictions outperforming the FAA Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS) baseline at every airport evaluated.
Scaled to the top 10 U.S. terminal areas, the Digital Flight Rerouting Capability projects to save roughly 1,800 hours of net delay per year. This package transfers that capability — the operational interfaces, machine learning services, system specifications, training materials, and lessons learned — to FAA and airline partners so the work continues beyond NASA’s field evaluation.
NASA has conducted over thirty years of air traffic management research that has informed and paved the way for FAA decision support systems. This effort continues that legacy illustrating how a cloud-based digital trajectory negotiation system between airlines and the FAA can benefit the National Airspace System and the flying public.