China is facing ever-increasing constraints in airspace capacity due to a 9.7% average annual increase rate in air traffic over the past decade. This situation underscores the need for the capability to forecast regional air traffic capacity with the operationally critical lead time for the region as well as the whole airspace of China. The end goal is to improve efficiency while maintaining safety and sustaining the growth in civil aviation. Similar to the United States and Europe, weather accounted for over 50% of all the flight delays in China since 2016 and is the biggest detriment to on-time flight performance. This paper reports results aiming to develop and demonstrate a decision support tool concept that provides objective and quantitative operational thresholds for east China regional airspace capacity reductions in the presence of convective weather impacts. By estimating airspace capacities for selected route segments, waypoints, and sectors, we have demonstrated 1) the effectiveness of the flow constraint index-based approach to quantify the airspace capacity in east China, and 2) the capabilities of the forecasted capacity based on the high-resolution nowcast algorithm and numerical weather prediction model compared to the calculated capacity based on observed weather data. The preliminary results indicated that the airspace capacity estimation using the
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