ISOBAR SESAR - Artificial intelligence solutions to meteo-based air traffic imbalances for network operations planning

Flight delays are one of the major concerns in air traffic management. The impact of flight delays represents financial and time losses and may derive in loss of reputation of the air traffic business. On average weather accounts for roughly one-third of ATFM (Air Traffic Flow Management) delays (25% for en-route and ~50% for the airports). Examining only the top ten days with highest delays due to weather regulations from the first half of 2018, strong convective activity throughout Europe was the principal cause, with estimated cost due to airport and en-route delays reaching almost €130 million (roughly 10% of the weather delay in 2018 concentrated in only 10 days). Given these large cost figures, even minor improvement in prediction and performance of ATFM operations during significant convective weather events will yield to substantial yearly savings for the ATM (Air Traffic Management) system. Designing an efficient value chain for ATFM, that propagates weather forecasts into a series of tools to select mitigation measures at local and network levels in a collaborative ATFM operations paradigm, requires a multidisciplinary approach to gather the different stakeholders. Such an approach has been developed in the SESAR ISOBAR project, whose aim is to integrate enhanced convective weather forecasts for predicting imbalances between air traffic capacity and demand (requests to fly by airspace users, mainly airlines) and to select appropriate mitigation measures. The value chain developed in the framework of ISOBAR leverages the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the different stages. AI engine is trained using a dataset of selected convective events in summer 2019, which includes forecasts from high resolution ensemble prediction systems (IFS, γ-SREPS and AROME-EPS), declared capacity in air traffic flow and initial air traffic demand. The value chain produces a solution for tactical (day 0) and pre-tactical (day -1) ATFM operations. A validation exercise was organised at EUROCONTROL Innovation Hub in March 2022 with the collaboration of ATC (Air Traffic Control) operational staff and Air Traffic Controllers from Spain, France and Europe air traffic network management. AI Engine was run for some high convective situations over Europe, which were characterised by high delays due to weather regulations. Offline simulations highlighted the added value of the solutions assessed by ATC experts. The predicted air traffic delay has been drastically cut by up 75%.