Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) 

Future Operational Environment above FL600 

• New types of operations 

− Hypersonic flight, reintroduction of supersonic passenger flights, and very slow or 

on-station long endurance flights 

• ATM scalability 

− Current manner of ATM service delivery cannot cost-effectively scale to meet the needs 

of the envisioned ETM environment 

− Current ATM services may not be desired in the ETM environment 

• Solutions are needed that 

− Scale beyond current ATM infrastructure and manpower resources 

− Promote shared situation awareness among Operators 

− Include Cooperative Separation and Provided Separation by ATC (where required) 

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Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) 

Cooperative Separation Development 

• ETM concept development requires FAA, NASA, industry, State agency, and stakeholder 

collaboration to evolve the current service mechanisms and realize solutions 

• NASA hosted two ETM Tabletops with FAA, industry, and government stakeholder Space Act 

partners to inform concept development 

o Tabletop #1 (April 2019) focused on understanding planned operations above FL600 and began 

discussions around a concept of operations for ETM 

• Established ETM foundational principles and assumptions for the cooperative environment 

• Established clear ETM development responsibilities for Industry, FAA, and NASA 

o Tabletop #2 (Dec 2019) explored ETM concept considerations associated with ATC/ETM 

interactions 

• Identified operational issues/considerations and data impacts associated with operations transitioning 

to/from ETM environment, operations that occur both above and below FL600, contingency operations, 

and other topics that impact air traffic control operations 

• Informed FAA ETM Concept of Operations document development 

• Informed engineering plans and considerations 

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Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) 

Principles & Assumptions 

• The ETM environment is notionally defined as Upper Class E airspace above FL600. 

• ETM Operators include - but are not limited to – commercial, public/government, and research 

entities operating both manned and unmanned vehicles. 

• Operations can move across multiple Flight Information Regions (FIRs). 

• The ETM supporting architecture and associated services are scalable to meet the needs of 

market forces. 

• Safe separation and demand capacity balancing are enabled through harmonized ETM airspace 

user interactions, established procedures, and compatible technology. 

• FAA retains its authority and responsibility over the airspace. 

• The ETM concept will be developed with consideration to international application. 

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Cooperative Separation 

Overview 

• Traffic management systems utilizing cooperative separation are community-based, where 

Operators are responsible for the coordination, execution and management of their 

operations, with community rules of the road approved by the FAA. 

• Operators within cooperative separation environments are responsible for maintaining 

separation from one another. 

• Cooperative separation utilizes a separate, collaborative set of separation services from those 

provided by ATC. 

• This federated set of services enables coordination between vehicle Operators, facilitated by thirdparty support providers, through networked information exchanges. 

• Access to the airspace must be equitable. Operators cannot optimize their own operations at 

the expense of sub-optimizing the ETM environment as a whole. 

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ETM Development 

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FAA 

Subject matter expertise 

Concept of operations 

Information requirements 

Roles/responsibilities 

definition 

Integration & 

interoperability needs 

NASA 

ETM research platform 

Flight test planning &

execution 

Performance requirements

for operations 

Industry 

Operational needs/use cases 

Cooperative sharing

methods/architecture 

Right of way rules 

Equity of access rules & 

enforcement 

Participation in flight tests & 

demonstrations 

Readiness of technologies 

Collaboration 

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Moving forward... 

• Proceed with development of ETM Concept of Operations to mature and refine the concept 

through use cases, roles and responsibilities allocation, and high-level operational and technical 

requirements 

• Perform engineering analyses to highlight opportunities and challenges in the current 

infrastructure, technology, policies, and rules with regard to their applicability to support future 

operations 

• Build simulation environment and conduct simulations to derive and validate requirements 

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