Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) Training Course

The Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) Training Course equips air navigation service provider professionals, flow management and capacity specialists, air traffic management staff, and airport and airline operations professionals with the knowledge and practical tools needed to balance air traffic demand against available capacity, reduce delays and congestion, and improve the efficiency, predictability, and resilience of the airspace system. As traffic grows and demand increasingly exceeds capacity at busy airports and in congested airspace, air traffic flow management has become essential to prevent overloads, maintain safety, minimize delays and fuel burn, and coordinate operations across providers, airports, airlines, and regions. Effective flow management depends on accurate demand and capacity data, sound measures, and close collaboration among all stakeholders. The course covers air traffic flow management from fundamentals to collaborative, data-driven operations. Participants learn the role and objectives of air traffic flow management, its relationship with air traffic management and capacity planning, and the phases of flow management, including strategic, pre-tactical, tactical, and post-operations analysis. The program then addresses demand forecasting and capacity assessment, demand and capacity balancing, and the main flow management measures, including rerouting, level capping, miles-in-trail and minutes-in-trail, ground delay programs, departure slots and calculated take-off times, airspace flow programs, and ground stops. Participants also examine collaborative decision making, including airport collaborative decision making and network collaborative processes, the roles of flow management positions and units, cross-border and regional flow management coordination, integration with airport operations, performance measurement of flow management, flow management tools and systems, handling disruptions such as weather, outages, and special events, and future concepts including trajectory-based operations and user-driven prioritization. The course is delivered through demand and capacity analysis exercises, flow measure selection workshops, ground delay program and slot allocation simulations, collaborative decision-making role plays, and disruption scenarios. Participants leave with a demand and capacity balancing worksheet, a flow management measures selection guide, a ground delay program and slot calculation template, a collaborative decision-making framework, and a flow management performance and post-operations review template.