Metis employees were recently honored along with other members of the Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Request (TASAR) team. On October 7th, NASA Langley Research Center leadership presented the team with the first annual Transformer of the Year award in the Group/Partnership category. The team won the award for a highly successful collaboration with Alaska Airlines that resulted in the Langley-developed Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) tool being installed and tested on revenue flights over a period from July 2018 through April 2019. TAP constantly monitors the host aircraft’s route through the national airspace (NAS), taking into account other air traffic, winds, convective weather, and restricted airspace. It then presents to the aircrew suggested route modifications that are optimized for fuel, or time, or both. The aircrew can then coordinate those modifications with Air Traffic Control. During the Alaska flight trials, TAP performed so well that the airline has decided to license the technology and develop it for deployment fleet-wide. Metis employees were key members of the TASAR team, and their contributions helped lay the groundwork for future autonomy in the NAS.
