Service Quality and Efficiency-Oriented Training Design in Air Traffic Management

Abstract

The main objective of the air traffic control (ATC) services is to ensure safe, efficient, and expeditious air traffic flow within an airspace or aerodrome according to international rules and regulations. Despite, the development of various automation systems to keep up with these objectives, air traffic control services still rely on radio-telephony (RT) communication which requires exchange of instructions and readbacks between air traffic controllers (ATCOs) and pilots. Although various studies indicate that the less number of instructions are correlated with less a workload and better quality of air traffic services, this is no always so, especially for the high traffic levels at which more instructions are required to maintain safe separation and efficient air traffic flow. Number of instructions can also differentiate depending on the characteristics of airspace and the type of air traffic control (area, approach or aerodrome). In order to obtain a broader insight regarding the quality of service including the air traffic and airspace characteristics, we need to include the effects of flight efficiency in the analysis. This study aims to explore correlation between the quality of service and flight efficiency based on real-time air traffic simulation experiments done on ATCO trainees in ATCOSIMA project. The experiments were carried out on two groups of trainees. The first group had only formal ATC training background while the second group went under an additional training focused on the flight efficiency and the service quality in addition to their formal training background. During the experiments, number of instructions per flight was collected as the indicator of quality of service while the total completion time of flights were collected as the indicator of the flight efficiency. The results of the analysis indicated that the number of instructions was decreased with the additional training but no significant change was observed in the flight completion time. A moderately significant correlation was also observed between the average number of instructions per aircraft and the completion time. In conclusion, a new training method focused on flight efficiency in addition to the formal training improve the quality of service and efficiency level of trainees. The findings of the study can provide important insights for the development of ATCO training and assessment. For the future work, the analysis can be expended for more efficiency indicators including effectiveness of trajectories and environmental impacts.