Analysis of Handoffs for Future En Route Automation

Abstract

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system to replace the current air traffic controller automation. In order to support the developmental and operational testing of ERAM, a study was conducted by the Automation Metrics Test Working Group (AMTWG) with the objective to address questions related to the handoff of flights by air traffic controllers as the flights pass from one controlling sector to another. Specifically, how effective would an automatic initialization of handoff (auto-init) be? Furthermore, what are the best situations for an accurate automatic initialization? In order to address these questions, handoffs needed to be investigated to determine the different possible scenarios and then analyzed to determine the efficiency of an automatic initialization within each scenario. Prior to the implementation of any testing strategy, actual flight data was collected for analysis. The data was analyzed for different events to determine the frequency of occurrence, and accuracy was determined based on statistics within each event crossing. The same strategy will be applied to actual ERAM data when it becomes available. The main metric selected for this study was the comparison of the predicted sector to actual next sector of handoff.