Enhancing Dynamic Airspace Configuration and Flight-Centric ATC through Clusterized Aircraft Early Handover

Clusterized early handover (CAEHO) is an inno- vative capacity-on-demand technique in Air Traffic Management (ATM) that mitigates sector overload by delegating the control of selected aircraft to adjacent sectors with available spare capacity, reducing reliance on costly and disruptive Short-Term ATFCM Measures (STAM). The CAEHO concept has been previously proposed and demonstrated its potential for targeted delegation. Building on this foundation, two new variants are introduced: fixed-area delegation and composable-area delegation. Taking advantage of the CAEHO framework, these variants can be in- terpreted as enhanced forms of Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) and Flight-Centric ATC (FCA), respectively, extending their applicability with early delegation principles. All three mechanisms are described and comparatively assessed in terms of operational principles, procedural integration, and suitability within the framework of Letters of Agreement (LoA). The analy- sis identifies distinct advantages, limitations, and implementation requirements for each variant, offering practical insights for their integration into current operations. The results provide a structured basis for developing flexible early handover solutions to support capacity-on-demand strategies in overloaded sectors.