Research presentation at the Federal Aviation Administration

FAA Seminar on Strategic Air Traffic Control Capacity Planning

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Aerospace Human Factors Research Division (AHFRD) continues its “New and Emerging Aviation Technologies” (NEAT) seminar series with an insightful discussion on strategic air traffic control capacity planning. The event on Thursday, June 24, 2025 will feature two distinguished experts in aviation and analytics:

• Prof. Dr. Arne K. Strauss, Chair Holder of the Mercator Endowed Chair of Demand Management & Sustainable Transportation and Academic Director of the MSc Business Analytics program at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.
• Dr. Jan-Rasmus Künnen, founder of the independent consultancy Wing Labs in Hamburg, Germany, specializing in aviation and analytics.

Addressing Uncertainty in Air Traffic Management

The seminar will focus on the challenges of strategic capacity planning in air traffic control (ATC), an increasingly complex task due to uncertainties such as unscheduled traffic, weather disruptions, and military operations. The speakers will present an optimization-based approach, rooted in an optimal learning framework, that enables more robust and resilient capacity decisions.

Key topics include:
✔️ How capacity sharing between Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) can mitigate risks of capacity shortages.
✔️ The use of detailed scenario projections of upcoming flight trajectories to improve capacity planning.
✔️ The role of optimization, simulation, and machine learning in balancing air traffic demand and supply.

About the Speakers

Prof. Dr. Arne Strauss is a leading expert in demand management and sustainable transportation. He previously held positions at Warwick Business School (UK) and was a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute in London. His research focuses on optimizing transportation systems, particularly in air traffic management, and has been conducted in collaboration with various industry stakeholders.

Dr. Jan-Rasmus Künnen is an experienced aviation consultant and former management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in supply chain and operations transformations. Holding a PhD in Air Traffic Modeling from WHU, he has applied advanced quantitative methods to enhance European Air Traffic Management (ATM).