Dirk Kügler

Sectorless ATM — A concept to increase en-route efficiency

Feasibility of a new air traffic management concept is examined which might increase the efficiency of en-route operations by up to 100%. The concept follows the idea of a sector-less airspace organization. Aircraft entering the airspace (e.g. the German airspace or the entire European Airspace) will be assigned to one controller who is in charge of controlling the aircraft from entry point (or TMA exit point) to exit point of the airspace (or TMA entry point). First simple real time simulations revealed very promising results. The concept seems to enable an easy transition into a user preferred trajectory (direct-to) operations whilst at the same time increasing ATCOs efficiency and airspace capacity.

Sectorless ATM and advanced SESAR concepts: Complement not contradiction

With SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) there is a program well on the way to developing and implementing advanced ATM (Air Traffic Management) concepts. Beyond the scope of the SESAR programme in the LRM2020 project there are investigations on sectorless ATM taking place, which would mean not an evolution but a revolution of current ATM. This discussion paper argues that sectorless ATM can not only be integrated and exploited within the SESAR innovations framework but also continues SESARs shift towards a more aircraft-centered view. The paper elaborates on the possibilities of bringing together the two concepts and thus conjointly meeting the goals of SESAR and mastering the challenges of future ATM.

First results on flight rules and conflict avoidance maneuvers for a sectorless ATM concept

The idea of sectorless ATM (Air Traffic Management) envisages the airspace as a whole instead of dividing it into sectors. The dismissal of sectors, however, necessitates the definition of a complete and unambiguous set of flight rules in order to regulate which aircraft has to introduce an avoidance maneuver in case of a conflict. This paper describes the research on flight rules conducted within DLRs research project on sectorless ATM and describes the developed rule set in detail. Since in a sectorless concept only one specified aircraft amongst the ones in conflict is responsible for the conflict resolution different kinds of avoidance maneuvers than nowadays are necessary. This paper specifies the avoidance maneuvers that have been developed for automatic conflict resolution by DLRs traffic simulator. In particular, vertical conflict resolution often combines horizontal and vertical avoidance to allow for inaccuracies of the vertical movement and trajectory prediction. The conflict resolutions are also offered as suggestions to the controller, who can either choose one of them or develop his or her own solution. It is debated why for short and medium-term conflict resolutions the automatically generated solutions might seem more sensible or efficient than for long-term conflict resolutions. It is explained that in long-term situations the system can be able to analyze situations more thoroughly than the controller. The discussion elaborates on possibilities to implement and apply these findings in a sectorless ATM concept.

Flight testing of noise abating required navigation performance procedures and steep approaches

To test different types of noise abatement approach procedures the Institute of Flight Guidance and the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology performed flight tests on 6 September 2010 with a Boeing 737-700. In total, 13 approaches to the research airport in Brunswick, Germany (EDVE) were flown while the approach area of the airport was equipped with six noise measurement microphones. Brunswick airport is equipped with an experimental ground based augmentation system which allows the implementation of 49 instrument landing system (ILS) look-alike precision approach procedures with different approach angles simultaneously.