THE MULTI-CENTER TMA SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
AND ITS IMPACT ON INTER-FACILITY COLLABORATION


Hoang, T., Farley, T., Foster, J., Davis, T.

ABSTRACT

The success of the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) system at Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control
Center (ARTCC) and other ARTCCs has prompted the further development of TMA to address problems in
the congested environment of the Northeast corridor of the US National Airspace System (NAS). This
region is characterized by terminal areas whose arrivals approach from more than one ARTCC thereby
requiring greater coordination in arrival traffic planning. NASA and the FAA are developing a
Multi-Center Traffic Management Advisor (McTMA) tool that introduces a new infrastructure to allow
individual TMA systems to communicate with each other, thereby forming a McTMA network. The prototype
system allows the four ARTCCs of the northeast (New York, Washington, Boston and Cleveland) and the
Philadelphia (PHL) Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility (TRACON) to share a regional view of the
arrival demand at the PHL airport. This shared view will enable these facilities to proactively
address PHL congestion issues through better coordination and management of traffic into an adjacent
air traffic control unit, be it a sector or a facility. This paper presents a high-level description
of the McTMA architecture and potential collaboration possibilities that may arise from using the
system.