Analysis of a Collaborative Decision Making Concept in Air Traffic Management: an Airline Perspective Lorenzo Castelli 1 , Elio Padoano 2 , Paola Pellegrini 1 , Andrea Ranieri 1 1 Dipartimento di Elettrotecnica, Elettronica ed Informatica, Universit`a di Trieste, Via A.Valerio 10, 34127, Trieste, Italy 2 Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Universit`a di Trieste, Via A.Valerio 8, 34127, Trieste, Italy email:{castelli, padoano, ppellegrini, aranieri}@units.it Abstract SESAR is the program aiming at the modernization of the Air Traffic Management infras- tructure in Europe. Its target concept is centered around the notion of Business Trajectory. It will evolve out of a layered Collaborative Decision Making process. The CATS project was launched in November 2007 for studying a possible practical implementation the Business Trajectory. It is based on the definition of a Contract of Objectives, i.e. an agreement of the main Air Traffic Management actors on 4D intervals called Target Windows. They must be used by aircraft and guaranteed by airports and air navigation service providers in order to achieve punctuality at destination. In this paper, the opportunity of implementing the new concept is analyzed from an airline point of view. The Analytic Hierarchic Process is used for comparing the situation in which CATS is implemented with the business-as-usual one. The results achieved indicate that the introduction of the new concept of operations is the preferable option. 1 INTRODUCTION The Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR) is the ambitious program aim- ing at the modernization of the Air Traffic Management (ATM) infrastructure in Europe. It constitutes the technological dimension of the Single European Sky initiative, launched in 2004 by the European Commission to restructure national organizations of airspaces. This will be achieved by a consolidation of air traffic services provision and a modernization of the ATM in- frastructure that will provide the capacity required by the steady growth of air traffic volumes. To achieve the technological innovation and the elimination of fragmentation, SESAR adopts a top-down performance-driven approach with four high level objectives: enabling a three-fold increase in capacity, improving safety by a factor of 10, reducing by 10% the environmental impact per flight, cutting ATM costs by 50%. The SESAR definition phase started in 2005 and was completed in 2008 with the delivery of the ATM master plan (SESAR Consortium 2008). It identifies the technological steps and the modernization priorities necessary for im- plementing the new ATM Target Concept (SESAR Consortium 2007). This Target Concept 1