Service management applied to air traffic control

The Air Traffic Services (ATS) is the operational division of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that provides air traffic management services. This paper discusses service management concepts applied to the air traffic control system. The criticality of providing air traffic control services has lead to a highly redundant, complex, and robust supporting infrastructure. Previous operations and maintenance practices focused on individual subsystems made it difficult to understand the overall service effectiveness resulting from lower-level actions and strategies. The FAA is adopting service management concepts as the focus for management so as to improve service while reducing costs. The service management concept considers the services provided to the aviation community by the FAA, their interrelationships to the National Airspace System (NAS) infrastructure services, and their planned management. The way in which the same service is viewed by the air traffic controllers and the NAS infrastructure service managers is illustrated using the Aircraft Separation Assurance service. The mappings of the air traffic control services to NAS infrastructure services, and the latter to the infrastructure systems are also provided. These service management concepts are used to promote a common understanding of NAS infrastructure services and relationships with ATS services, provide a framework for capturing the costs of services, and establish a "situational awareness" concept for NAS infrastructure service management and how it relates to the operational needs of air traffic controllers and pilots.