ABSTRACT
The National Airspace System (NAS) relies heavily on distributed responsibilities across individuals in multiple roles in order to help ensure safety and efficiency. This chapter looks at two other groups within the NAS, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) traffic flow managers and airline aircraft dispatchers, who have a number of responsibilities that complement those assigned to pilots and controllers. From an FAA perspective, traffic managers and dispatchers involve identifying constraints in the NAS and implementing plans to safely maximize throughput given these constraints. The design of the NAS provides a classic example of a distributed work system. The architecture for distributing work can be categorized along several interacting dimensions: allocation of strategic versus tactical decisions; design for coordination versus collaboration; and incorporation of overlapping responsibilities to provide safety nets. The management of departures from an airport is a highly distributed subsystem within the NAS.
