Air Traffic Win-Win Wins NASA Software of the Year

This means that air traffic controllers must send them on less-direct paths to their final destination, using more fuel in the process.

An innovative software tool for air traffic management, called Terminal Sequencing and Spacing, or TSAS, will help planes descend more efficiently by controlling the spacing between individual aircraft, before they even reach the airport.

By telling air traffic controllers when to hold some planes back and speed others up, making adjustments in real time, this tool not only increases the rate of landing at an airport, but decreases the amount of fuel consumed by individual flights, too.

Aircraft that descend continuously into landing use less fuel, create fewer emissions and save passengers time. TSAS was designed specifically for periods of moderate- to high-air traffic congestion - exactly when such a tool is needed most.

TSAS was developed at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, and is the winner of NASA's Software of the Year for 2017. Ames has been honored with the award for four consecutive years.

Funded by NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, TSAS is one of a suite of technologies that aims to increase coordination among pilots and air traffic controllers in the next-generation vision for America's national air space.

The air traffic management tool was handed over to the Federal Aviation Administration for deployment at airports in the field.'