Hilton Bateman

Integrated Collaborative Departure Traffic Management

In today’s departure traffic management operation, Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) face numerous challenges allocating the “right route to the right flight at the right time”, especially when thunderstorms are present. The lack of integrated traffic, weather, and airspace resource information leads to inefficient, reactive operations, and the lack of common understanding of the situation creates mistrust among decision makers. The point of action (the air traffic control tower) is too far removed from the point of decision making (the air traffic control center), producing departure queues where the wrong flight is in the wrong place at the wrong time. This paper discusses these challenges in today’s departure traffic management operation, how these challenges can be mitigated with the help of the right decision support tool(s), and how to truly realize the goal of having the right route for the right flight at the right time.

Integrated Departure Route Planning

This paper describes research on the integrated departure route planning (IDRP) operational concept and supporting functions that will assist traffic flow management (TFM) personnel conducting departure management. IDRP will provide automated support and information to help decision makers evaluate and implement different solutions, taking into account all significant data such as filed flight plans and acceptable alternatives, surface departure queues, predicted convective weather and traffic congestion impacts to routes in the terminal area and nearby en route airspace, and forecast uncertainty. By bringing all of these factors into a single integrated environment, IDRP will reduce the time needed to make departure management decisions and coordinate their implementation, increase the effectiveness of the decisions made, and support efficient revision of departure management plans as weather and traffic situations change. IDRPpsilas background and operational concept are described, followed by an overview of a prototype used to demonstrate and evaluate the concept. Results are presented from a series of interviews with experts having TFM experience; these sessions helped to enhance the operational concept and refine the information requirements for the prototype. Next steps are to implement the IDRP prototype in operational centers for the purpose of obtaining further data about the usage and benefits of the capabilities, and to conduct additional laboratory research exploring more highly automated IDRP functionality and addressing integration issues.

Converging Runway Display Aid in the NAS: Challenges, successes and outlook

The Converging Runway Display Aid (CRDA) is a simple, passive visualization tool that has been available in the terminal automation systems in the National Airspace System (NAS) for about 20 years. CRDA is geared towards simplifying the use of intersecting or converging approaches and paths. Its simplicity has often prompted aviation enthusiasts to hypothesize wider use in the NAS to improve both the safety and capacity of the system. Even so, the tool has not realized wide-spread use in the NAS. Recently, RTCA Task Force V recommended that it be implemented at more sites in the NAS. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has incorporated its wider use as one of its flight plan goals. This has helped its deployment at several new key sites. This paper explores basic factors that contribute to the challenges in deploying CRDA and how they could be addressed. It presents the example of the recent CRDA deployment at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to document and illustrate how this process can and has been applied successfully. It describes the impact of the CRDA use at EWR by analyzing one year of operational data. It concludes with a report on the outlook for CRDA deployment in the NAS.

Reinventing high density area departure traffic management

As a complex dynamic system, todays National Airspace System (NAS) can be very sensitive to disruptive events. High density area departure management is particularly sensitive to such disruptions. This paper builds upon previous research that proposes an operational concept to ensure safe, efficient, and stable departure traffic management in the Next Generation Air Transportation System. This research first proposes the proper roles and responsibilities of Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) in different facilities and then defines the functions/capabilities needed to support the roles and responsibilities identified. This paper models, simulates, and compares the performance of the proposed operation with todays operation. The sensitivity of the proposed operation to events like over-head flow constraints is also examined and compared with todays operation. The results reveal that the proposed concept provides performance enhancements and system stability in response to disruption.

A Decision Support Tool for High Density Area Departure and Arrival Traffic Management

An operational concept is proposed to improve high-density area departure and arrival traffic management that specifically accounts for complications arising from multiple airports located in close proximity. In the proposed concept, the roles and responsibilities are redistributed among the Traffic Management Coordinators in different facilities, which include the Air Route Traffic Control Center, Terminal Radar Approach Control, and the Airport Traffic Control Tower. The redistribution of roles and responsibilities facilitates improved decision making capabilities thereby increasing safe, efficient, and stable operation of departure and arrival traffic in the Next Generation Air Transportation System. This paper proposes a set of functions and capabilities needed to support the roles and responsibilities defined in the proposed concept. The decision support system framework defines three levels of decision making and incorporates an optimization methodology to assist decision makers at the different phases of the decision process. A detailed description of the decomposition and corresponding decision support system structure are presented and a description of the optimization models is provided. An analysis is performed on a realistic traffic example to demonstrate the optimization model and illustrate the concept.

Management of holding patterns: A potential ADS-B application

Holding in the national airspace system (NAS) is a necessity in the management of air traffic into the major airports in the system. The necessity follows from the desire not to waste any landing slots at the airport in the face of system uncertainties. Holding patterns maintain a ready reservoir of aircraft nearby the airport to provide a steady flow of aircraft. At the same time that this strategy provides an effective mechanism for providing pressure on the airport, it is workload intensive and inefficient in flowing aircraft uniformly to the airport. This document provides evidence of the amount of holding that is experienced for the New York airports and introduces a concept of using automatic dependent surveillance - broadcast (ADS-B) information to reduce the controller workload and increase the uniformity of the flow of aircraft out of the holding patterns. Estimates of the expected benefits are also presented as well as the next steps to be taken.

Some New Potential ASAS Applications in the Terminal and En Route Domains

This paper documents new Airborne Separation Assistance System (ASAS) applications for consideration by the ASAS community for further analysis and development. It identifies several potential applications of the information displayed on a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) which may substitute for direct visual contact with a particular airplane of interest. CDTI assisted “visual” separation (CAVS) may provide operational efficiency in the terminal area under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) that could approach that of pure visual operations in visual meteorological conditions (VMC). If proved feasible IMC CAVS applications would provide significant capacity benefits in the terminal domain. Several CAVS applications are presented, including CDTI based spacing during instrument approaches (IMC CAVS) to single and parallel runways and departure spacing during high demand departure operations (Departure CAVS). The document describes the problems associated with holding patterns in the National Airspace System (NAS) and postulates an evolutionary ASAS application of ADS-B based spacing and separation for reducing ATC workload during holding and improving the spacing accuracy out of holding patterns. The paper also includes description of an application of merging and spacing for departures. The proposed applications include a need statement citing examples from current NAS operations, and conclude with a brief application description. It is recommended that these proposals be analyzed in greater detail to determine their NAS-wide benefits and feasibility.

Framework for High-Density-Area Departure and Arrival Traffic Management

An operational concept is proposed to improve high-density-area departure and arrival traffic management that specifically accounts for complications arising in metroplex operations where multiple airports are located in close proximity. In the proposed concept, the roles and responsibilities are redistributed among the traffic management coordinators in different facilities, which include the air route traffic control center, terminal radar approach control, and the airport traffic control tower. The redistribution of roles and responsibilities facilitates improved decision-making capabilities, thereby increasing safe, efficient, and stable operation of departure and arrival traffic in the Next Generation Air Transportation System. This paper proposes a set of functions and capabilities needed to support the roles and responsibilities defined in the proposed concept. The decision support system framework defines three levels of decision making and incorporates an optimization methodology to assist decisi...

Improving Departure Capacity of Major U.S. Airports in Marginal Visual Conditions: Applications of Procedures Using Cockpit Display of Traffic Information

†† This paper describes the need for recovering the loss in the departure capacity at busy airports in the U. S. when meteorological conditions deteriorate below excellent visual conditions. It describes departure operations at The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) and the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and details how the loss of the ability to apply visual separation between departures results in a loss in departure capacity at these airports. It shows that the inability to apply visual separation is tied not just to the meteorological conditions on the airport surface but requires excellent visual conditions well above basic VFR minima with ceilings as high as several thousand feet. The paper provides data on departure delays caused by this loss in departure capacity during less than excellent visual conditions. It identifies a concept for using information displayed on a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) enabled by Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) mode to substitute for direct visual contact with a particular airplane of interest. It shows how CDTI enabled delegated separation (CEDS) may recoup this lost departure capacity in such busy terminal areas down to considerably lower minima and describes the results of recent pilot human-in-the-loop simulations that demonstrate this benefit.

Low cost surface awareness technology and field demonstration

Advanced surface surveillance capabilities have been shown to dramatically improve surface safety and aid in situation awareness, but these capabilities cannot be economically justified for small and medium airports. The MITRE Corporation has developed a concept for Low Cost Surface Awareness, built upon the use of commercial-off-the-shelf infrared cameras, computer vision processing, and georeferencing algorithms. The end-to-end solution was prototyped and demonstrated at Teterboro Airport. The demonstration revealed that aircraft and airport operations vehicles can be located on the airport surface with less than 35 feet error.