The Operational Risk Coordination Assistant (ORCA) offers an integrated data and advanced analytics solution to provide airlines with models to predict potential operational risks to flight operations at high-traffic airports. We define operational risk from the airline perspective as the likelihood that flights will be delayed, re-routed, or cancelled due to weather, congestion, and other factors.

Using algorithms based on analysis of historical data and current weather and forecasts, ORCA generates probabilistic airport arrival capacity forecasts and combines them with predicted demand to estimate delays under the possible outcomes.

ORCA will provide airlines with an improved ability to predict possible operational conditions at destination airports, allowing them to build better plans and manage their network operations to improve on-time performance and customer satisfaction. Our tool provides a guide for airlines to make decisions under uncertainty, estimating the expected costs of different actions for a set of possible outcomes. For the FAA, ORCA offers a tool to integrate multiple factors into a probabilistic assessment of ever-changing conditions and their potential impact on flight safety and efficiency.

ORCA forecasts are available for 15 U.S. airports: ATL, BWI, CLT, DCA, DEN, DFW, DTW, EWR, IAD, IAH, JFK, LGA, MEM, MIA, and ORD.