Improving efficiency of departure release for en route overhead traffic flow management

Departures from some airports have to receive an approval by traffic management coordinators before their release. Such approvals are necessary to ensure that the departing aircraft will be accommodated in the overhead stream, which may have a miles-in-trail or some other traffic flow management restriction. Presently, such approvals are received by voice communications between tower controllers and traffic management coordinators. However, under busy periods, multiple tower controllers wait to talk to the traffic management coordinator. Such waiting time and the actual communications time to obtain the clearance create inefficient operations for both tower controllers and traffic management coordinators. This paper presents a proposed capability for electronic communications between the tower controllers and en route traffic management coordinators. This capability reduces the waiting and communications time between the tower controllers and traffic management coordinators.