ORCA will provide airlines with an improved ability to predict possible operational conditions at destination airports, allowing them to build better plans and manage their network operations to improve on-time performance, customer satisfaction, and assist the FAA in matching demand to available capacity. Our tool provides a guide for airlines to make decisions under uncertainty, estimating the expected costs of different actions for a set of possible outcomes. For the FAA, ORCA offers a tool to integrate multiple factors into a probabilistic assessment of ever-changing conditions and their potential impact on flight safety and efficiency.
Our concept aims to support airlines operating in an environment in which they collaborate with the FAA to define objectives, share constraint information, develop plans, and share responsibility in the execution. In that vision, operators require the ability to predict with greater accuracy than today what the operating conditions and constraints will be over the next several hours. Improved predictive capability will enable airlines to build more flexible plans and prepare alternatives should operating conditions change.
ORCA supports achievement of NASA milestones for Increasing Diverse Operations under the ATM-X project. By integrating multiple technologies and developing new predictive algorithms, ORCA offers IDO the potential for improving traffic flows into high-density airports. We offer an innovative integration of multiple data services with predictive analytics to help airlines to better manage and respond to the uncertainty in their operations. We offer an approach that enables the airline to better forecast and plan for potential disruptions.
ORCA meets a stated industry need for tools to assist in decision making in an uncertain environment and help them identify potential disruptions and evaluate options for mitigating the costs of disrupted operations from dynamic shifts in weather, traffic density, and airspace constraints. ORCA can be used in the airline operations center with existing dispatch systems, with no upfront investment.