The situation today can be described as very frustrating for a variety of reasons. Air traffic flow-management (ATFM) has dominated the scene for many years since its conception in 1980. At that time, the principles of ATFM were directed at ensuring that temporary or isolated sector overloads could be handled by ATC and only when broad, prolonged overloads were expected was ATFM activated. Today, we have the reverse situation, where ATFM is active throughout 16 h or more during each day. The system as such was never intended or planned to cope with such a burden and the results are seen in a variety of forms, including departure delays as shown in Fig. 1.