Description
The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) is seeking access to domestic and international airline schedule data required by the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS). This data set is important for the mission of ETMS. ETMS is an operational FAA system providing the means by which the FAA can monitor and control air traffic. As such, the ETMS relies upon schedule airline data to allow the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) and other traffic managers to effectively and safely manage the nations airports and airspace. Current and accurate flight schedule information is used in the ETMS to balance aircraft capacity and demand for airports and airway fixes, and is used by ATCSCC and specialists to predict traffic problems and avoid delays by implementing national traffic management initiatives. Without this data areas could become overloaded and compromise air safety. The nature of the required services demands that the ETMS have continuous and reliable schedule flight data worldwide. Volpe Center, as the ETMS Hubsite, has subscribed schedule flight data from Official Airline Guide (OAG) Worldwide, Inc. for years. ETMS has developed software to read the OAG files and process the airline schedule data with historical flight path data to produce a new ETMS Schedule Database (SDB). ETMS uses the SDB to provide schedule information to the traffic managers. The Volpe Center is seeking capability information on schedule flight data in the form mentioned under Capability Requirements below. This is not a request for competitive proposals or qualifications. The information must show that any interested party has the ability to provide the requisite services, data and operational support that meet the following Government requirements: ETMS Schedule Flight Data Requirements The Contractor shall provide the necessary personnel, facilities, equipment, materials, and services, except otherwise specified, to provide subscription services of the worldwide schedule flight data as specified below. 1. Weekly Bulk Data transmission The Contractor shall provide for a full flight schedule to be made available weekly on a day and time to be coordinated between the Volpe Center and the Contractor. The range of the data shall be for 45 days. The following fields are required in each weekly delivery: Leave Country Code FAA Airport Code GMT Leave Time Arrival Country Code FAA Airport Code GMT Arrival Time Flag Code Equipment Code FAA Carrier Code Flight Number Days of Service Category Effective Date Discontinue Date As part of the subscription service, the Contractor shall provide changes to the bulk data file as stated below: Provide effective and discontinue dates. If there is no effective date available the date reverts to the first day of the delivered data files. If there is no discontinue date the date reverts to the last date of data. There are to be no assumptions. Provide a carrier code in the carrier code field when there is no match in the FAA carrier code table. This change will give the FAA more flexibility in determining which carriers are missing from the FAA carrier code table. Provide for the deletion of multiple flight records. Since the flight data is primarily a marketing tool, the schedule information contained in the scheduled flight data may reflect a slightly different set of flights from what is actually flown during the applicable time period. Provide all flight leg segments for flights worldwide. Provide all segments of scheduled flight records. There will be times a carrier will fly from a U.S. airport to an international airport with a non-ticket-selling stop at another U.S. airport. The second segment of this flight should be included. The Volpe Center currently receives the worldwide flight schedule data on a weekly file on each Wednesday. In addition to that, Volpe Center receives three support reports. Daylight Savings Time File If the validity of the worldwide schedules file crosses a Daylight Savings Time event, the contractor shall provide a support file which contains the following: Carriers affected by DST event Time Divisions affected by DST event Data used for performing DST Not Actioned job Flights affected by DST event Production Run Totals File A file provides the totals of each weekly production run. Unresolved FAA Codes File A file will be provided on a weekly basis that outlines any unresolved FAA Carrier Codes. The file should show the carrier names that do not have FAA Codes. It should outline the carrier name and their International Air transport Association (IATA) codes. 2. Quarterly Bulk Aircraft/City Tracking System (ACTS) Files The contractor shall provide a copy of airlines equipment and airports updated during the previous quarter (Quarterly Codes file). The Volpe Center currently receives one single quarterly file in March, June, September and December. The Quarterly Codes file should include the following fields: The first two records on the file are Header Records identified with UHL1 and UHL2. These records contain the filename, date of creation and copyright information. Equipment Code and Airport Code Locations Records follow in order labeled below: Equipment Code Records Equipment End Record Airport Code Location Record End Record The Equipment Code Record contains the IATA assigned code, equipment type and equipment name. The Airport Code Location Record contains the airport and city code, the longitude and latitude coordinates for the airports, the airport and city name, UTC difference between local time at the city or airport and Greenwich, England and a country code which refers to the DOT World Airways Code List. 3. DATA TRANSMISSION The contractor shall have the capability to transmit the data to the ETMS receiving site via reliable, robust and independent communication line. The files will be placed in a directory on a host machine, which can be accessed remotely by Volpe Center staff. Files provided by the contractor shall be compatible with existing ETMS receiving equipment. If not, the contractor shall specify and offer standard off-the-shelf equipment to receive the files and interface with ETMS. Current ETMS SDB file format is proprietary to the current long time contractor OAG, Worldwide, Inc. The file structure for the bulk data transmission files shall be: ASCII Sequential File 56 characters per line The contractor shall provide the schedule flight data in a digital stream for direct input into the existing ETMS SDB software for processing. The contractor shall make provisions that the data feed may have to interface with the ETMS firewall as the point of demarcation, if requested. Also, the data feed shall be supported by an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and a backup generator power at the contractors facility, if requested. System Availability and Reliability All subscribed data must be available at the receiving site at scheduled delivery time. Availability means the data, if they are available to the contractor, are received by the receiving site within the update interval 99.99% of the time. Capability Requirements All responsible sources may respond to this Sources Sought Notice and responses will be fully considered by the Agency. Interested firms are required to demonstrate that its schedule flight data is compatible with ETMS by supplying a sample data set in a CD ROM at no cost to the Government, and two (2) copies of document that describes in sufficient detail, the files, the types and formats of the files and any special software and/or requirements to access the files in the CD so as to allow an evaluation of a bonafide capability to satisfy the Governments requirements by August 15, 2007. The weekly schedule flight data shall begin at 0000Zulu on a Wednesday thats (40)( 5 )days before April 2, 2006 so as to allow for the capability of handling daylight savings time. The Volpe Center expects a total of four weekly files. The quarterly data shall cover December 1, 2005 through February 28, 2006. Volpe Center expects one quarterly file. In addition to test for the compatibility of the data and the ETMS SDB software, Volpe Center and ETMS shall check for accuracy of the data and completeness of the sample data set versus the worldwide schedule flight data set Volpe Center is currently subscribing. Do not include any pricing information. Please send documentation to the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Attn: Donald MacGee, RTV-6D2, 55 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142-1093.