Air Traffic Services Research Articles

Is access to general aviation airports with precision approach and no instrument landing systems a club good? A study of six airports

Access to general aviation (GA) airports can generally be viewed as non-excludable and non-rivalrous. However, access to GA airports using lateral vertical guidance (LPV/LP) and no instrument landing systems (ILS) will exclude aircraft operators not equipped to take advantage of satellite navigation, thus transforming access into a club good. Extending access to GA airports through satellite navigation is an important aviation issue at a time when air traffic service providers are transitioning from a radar- to a satellite-based air traffic managed system. The provision of access to GA airports with precision approach and no ILS as a club good may require a change in the level of service that emphasizes service priority to the aircraft capable of taking advantage of satellite navigation as opposed to a first-come, first-served queue management.

Analysis of admissibility of central tendency measures to estimate aviation operator progress

Human role in ensuring flight safety in the system " flight crew – aircraft – medium – air traffic service unit" is considered. The possibility of the training process modeling using stochastic models is shown. The components of the stationary stochastic model of the aviation operator training process were determined. Eleven central tendency measures: arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, three previous measures using weight coefficients, median, mode, Tukey's test, trimmed mean, Winsorized mean and implementation of so-called "bottleneck planning" as potential indicators of aviation operator's permanent personal characteristics were examined.For each of the potential indicators of permanent personal characteristics, their mathematical properties were analyzed and compared with the requirements arising from the application features. The necessity to synthesize a single parameter, which will be based on the requirements of the real process was substantiated.

A Simulation of Signal Collisions over the North Atlantic for a Spaceborne ADS-B Receiver Using Aloha Protocol

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is an air traffic surveillance system in which aircraft broadcast GPS position, velocity and status on 1090 MHz at random intervals between 0.4 and 0.6 seconds. ADS-B networks for air traffic monitoring have been implemented worldwide, but ground stations cannot be installed in oceanic regions, leaving these areas uncovered. A solution for tracking aircraft over the ocean is through the monitoring of ADS-B signals by using spaceborne receivers. The Royal Military College of Canada has developed an ADS-B receiver that is scheduled to fly as a technology demonstrator on the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7 (CanX-7) nanosatellite. The payload will collect ADS-B data over the North Atlantic that will be compared to truth data provided by air traffic services. A potential issue for the CanX-7 payload is signal collisions. The extended footprint of the satellite coverage means that a large number of aircraft may be in view at any one time, leading to ADS-B messages that arrive simultaneously at the receiver not being decoded. A simulation of CanX-7 passage over the operations area was carried out to calculate the probability of signal collisions. Using the Aloha Protocol, it was determined that the loss of information as a result of signal collisions is well within the standards of ground based radars used by air traffic system agencies.

Management of convergement of air and rail traffic services: A process approach

Passenger transportation represents one kind service with a certain quality and many parameters. Representing the transportation service users, passengers consider some of the quality parameters significantly important. The most important two parameters are the speed and time consumed for the transport. A passengers expects from the transportation service to take him in the shortest possible period of time to his destination. The air traffic transportation must provide the passengers with the transport to / from the airport using the some other traffic class, mostly road traffic. The integrated service is seen as the product of the convergement process among air and rail traffic, where harmonization is viewed through the cooperation of these two traffic branches with the goal of providing a complete service that will in it's quality meet the passengers needs and expectations.

CASE STUDY OF THE FIRST VOLCANIC ASH EXERCISE IN ROMANIA USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES

In this paper we present results from the first European (EUR) and North Atlantic (NAT) volcanic ash exercise (VOLCEX) which includes all the warning phases associated as alerting, reactive and proactive phases. Because volcanic ash represents one of the most serious natural hazards that could affect aviation safety, the measurement campaign was focused on improving the reaction of relevant authorities in case of airspace contamination with volcanic ash and, particularly, to assess the current operational procedures and information flows. Organized in the frame of the International Civil Aviation Organization EUR/NAT Office in Paris, the VOLCEX measurements in Romania were coordinated by the Romanian Atmospheric 3D research Observatory (RADO) and Romanian Air Traffic Services (ROMATSA). The results from lidar measurements from Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj-Napoca-Napoca and Timisoara are presented, emphasizing the dynamics of the aerosol layers and the estimation of particle mass concentrations in the free troposphere.

Quantifying the Human Element of Safety in Airport Tower Operations: Overcoming Risks Introduced by Static Airport Characteristics

The primary responsibility of an Airport Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) controller is to prevent collisions between aircraft and other hazards on the surface and in the immediate vicinity. The safety service provided by controllers at towers with larger operations greatly exceeds the costs of establishing those towers. As the number of operations decreases, the costs of operating the tower may begin to outweigh the benefits of staffing the tower. With a focus on visual air traffic services (VATS), this assessment aims to examine the safety benefits being provided by controllers at ATCT in Class Delta (D) airspace through safety event narratives and airport characteristics. Safety event reports describing instances where an ATCT controller provided a service that reduced the consequences of the event were collected. The reports were classified to identify latent factors, causal factors, and positive safety benefits. The adverse causal factors and positive safety benefits were then utilized to determine statistically significant risk-benefit pathways describing the safety benefits that controllers provide at airports in Class D airspace. This paper presents the static risk-benefit pathway, one of the three determined pathways for Class D ATCT.

항공교통관제사의 항공기 합류순서결정에 대한 확률적 예측모형 개발

Arrival management is a tool which provides efficient flow of traffic and reduces ATC workload by determining aircraft's sequence and schedules while they are in cruise phase. As a decision support tool, arrival management should advise on air traffic control service based on the understanding of human factor of its user, air traffic controller. This paper proposed a prediction model for air traffic controller sequencing strategy by analyzing the historical trajectory data. Statistical analysis is used to find how air traffic controller decides the sequence of aircraft based on the speed difference and the airspace entering time difference of aircraft. Logistic regression was applied for the proposed model and its performance was demonstrated through the comparison of the real operational data.

Legal Considerations about the Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370

The missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 of 8 May 2014 is not only a technical mystery, but demonstrates several weaknesses of the current technical, regulatory and organizational infrastructure of international civil aviation. Safety critical communication connectivity is not global and as seamless as generally perceived, neither are air traffic services. The disappearance of MH 370 was an event that did not fit the regulatory pattern of search and rescue and therefore put a strain on international cooperation of States, from the political to the working levels. This article discusses the difficulties of managing search and rescue, accident investigation, civil-military cooperation and CNS-ATM shortcomings within the international legal framework.

Communication System Improvement for Air Traffic Service to Provide a Continuous Surveillance over the Oceanic Area

Air traffic service is an extra-ventricular service which regulates and assists aircraft in real time to ensure their safe operations. The importance of the air traffic service is to prevent collision between aircraft and to expedite and maintain an orderly flow of the air traffic. The objective of this project is to assess the effectiveness of the installed system in assisting the air traffic controller in providing the air traffic service. In order to achieve this objective, the Automatic Dependent Surveillance and Controller Pilot Data Link Communication (ADS/CPDLC) system has been installed and its functionality to provide continuous surveillance and communication has been evaluated. A survey of 35 air traffic controllers had participated to assess the effectiveness of the system to the air traffic controller. The results showed that over 80% of the air traffic controllers agree that the system is able to provide a continuous surveillance and continuous communication over the oceanic area. Apart from that, 60% of the air traffic controllers agree the reduced separation minima can be applies over the oceanic area by using the application of the system. Base on this result, reduced separation minima over the oceanic area can be applied in order to expedite and maintain an orderly flow of air traffic over the oceanic area.

Implementasi Safety Management System ( SMS ) Pada Jasa Layanan Lalu Lintas Udara

A plane crash can occur due to many factors, including the aircraft itself a factor, the factor of human error, weather factors, or even ketida¬kberfungsian of airport facilities. Factors ¬faktor basically it is the responsibility of each relevant parties such as the airport as an institution pen¬gelola provider of air traffic services (air traffic service provider), airlines, and the Department of Transportation as the regulator. Weather factors, which may actually be diantisi¬pasi, often the scapegoat cause of the accident. Meanwhile several accidents, involving airline would indicate that it is not serious enforcement of safety standards and procedures of government. This prompted the company as a business cost, especially providers of air traffic services or kebandaraan made various efforts to reform the management system mau¬pun service to consumers. Management of service quality teaching that any form and regardless of the situation as a service provider, there is no reason for not trying to satisfy the public. In this case, the implementation of a Safety Management System, hereinafter referred to as the Safety Management System (SMS) became the standard size is calculated in the management of airport services management. PT (Persero) Angkasa Pura II has approximately five thousand personnel who move in 12 airports, running hundreds of standards, rules and producer, applying thousands of manuals, and local regulations as well as

Efficient Computation of Separation-Compliant Speed Advisories for Air Traffic Arriving in Terminal Airspace

A class of problems in air traffic management (ATM) asks for a scheduling algorithm that supplies the air traffic services authority not only with a schedule of arrivals and departures but also with speed advisories. Since advisories must be finite, a scheduling algorithm must ultimately produce a finite data set, hence must either start with a purely discrete model or involve a discretization of a continuous one. The former choice, often preferred for intuitive clarity, naturally leads to mixed-integer programs (MIPs), hindering proofs of correctness and computational cost bounds (crucial for real-time operations). In this paper, a hybrid control system is used to model air traffic scheduling, capturing both the discrete and continuous aspects. This framework is applied to a class of problems, called the fully routed nominal problem. We prove a number of geometric results on feasible schedules and use these results to formulate an algorithm that attempts to compute a collective speed advisory, effectively piecewise linear with finitely many vertices, and has computational cost polynomial in the number of aircraft. This work is a first step toward optimization and models refined with more realistic detail.

Aeronautical Study for Flight Time Estimation Applying Artificial Neural Network and Genetic Algorithm

Since the adoption of open-air policy, people make more frequent use of air travel to do various business or tourism activities. The volume of air traffic has greatly increased, along with the occurrences of traffic jam in the air. Delays of landings or take-offs and the congestions in the approach air space have become commonplace, exacerbating the already heavy workload of air-traffic controllers and the inadequacies of ATC system. Therefore, a study of flight time in ATC operation to help alleviate airspace congestions has become more and more urgent and important. Taking international airway A1 as an example, this study makes use of the known entry time, flight altitude, speed, penetrating and descending as the input of artificial neural networks; the time between departure and transfer point as the output of Artificial Neural Networks, to establish artificial neural network. Applying artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm to the study to simulate the result of actual flight, one can precisely estimate the flight time, thereby making it an efficient air-traffic-control instrument. It can help controllers handle different time segments of air traffic, thus upgrading the quality of air traffic control service.

The transponder data recorder: Implementation and first results

The secondary surveillance radar (SSR), that is an evolution of the military identification friend-or-foe systems, is widely used by air traffic control service providers to localize and identify co-operating aircraft equipped with a standard transponder [1]. The ground SSR installation transmits interrogations, from a rotating, narrow azimuthal beam antenna. The airborne transponders, once they have received an interrogation, transmit at a 1,090-MHz carrier a reply signal containing the requested data, i.e., identity (mode A reply) or fight level (mode C reply). Azimuth and range of the aircraft are measured by the interrogator, based on the delay of the reply and on the antenna pointing angle. The current SSR standard is based on the use of selective interrogations and replies and is called mode S: to reduce the interferences, the mode S protocol is based on a message format that includes the unique address of the aircraft. The airborne segment of the SSR is composed of the transponder and a pair of antennas on top and on the bottom of the fuselage. As the aircraft antennas are omnidirectional, many ground stations can receive the replies. This allowed the development of multilateration (MLAT) systems for the aircraft localization based on 1,090-MHz signals [2]. A typical MLAT system is composed of a distributed network of 1,090-MHz sensors, an interconnecting facility, and a central processor for the fusion of the sensor data. The data fusion relies on the estimation of the signals arrival time at the different stations and on hyperbolic localization. To identify the emitters, the processing is done with mode A replies or mode S replies that contain the emitter identity. A transponder with mode S capability can also transmit a particular downlink format message, called squitter, containing the aircraft's unique address and other information. The squitter signals are not elicited by the SSR interrogation, but they are spontaneously emitted at pseudoperiodical intervals. They are the basis of the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) concept [3]: the ADS-B OUT function periodically transmits information (identity, position, state, etc.) about the aircraft, and the ADS-B IN function receives the messages from nearby traffic. On the airborne side, the ADS-B OUT broadcasts data with onboard equipment using the squitter signals. The airborne ADS-B IN equipment provides to the pilot the traffic scenario, receiving the messages from ground and nearby aircraft ADS-B OUT. Moreover, the ADS-B IN can receive other ground services: the traffic information services-broadcast (TIS-B) and the fight information services-broadcast (FIS-B) [3]. Airport vehicles can be equipped with an ADS-B OUT, a simplified, nonflyable device transmitting 1,090-MHz squitter signals containing the identity and the position. As a matter of fact, there are various users of the 1,090-MHz channel: 1) SSR transponder replies (modes A, C, S); 2) ADS-B OUT messages; 3) MLAT systems with interrogation capability; and 4) TIS-B.

2308 航空交通サービスにおける遠隔タワー業務システムに関する研究(OS3-2 航空機の制御,OS3 交通・物流システムの制御,オーガナイズド・セッション(OS))

2308 航空交通サービスにおける遠隔タワー業務システムに関する研究(OS3-2 航空機の制御,OS3 交通・物流システムの制御,オーガナイズド・セッション(OS))

THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL IN BRAZIL AND THE NAVIGATION SYSTEM: current status, future modifications and those already implemented

The model of functioning of air traffic service in Brazil, the existence and use of current navigation aid, the changes that are being implemented and planned for the near future, are not always aware of all users (crew, operators or persons directly linked to the aviation Branch). Particularly due to the growth of world air traffic, it is necessary a minimum of knowledge on the part of these people, so that, regardless of the area in which is linked, since in the field of aviation, be aware of the changes that are occurring. With this goal, will be shown in this work, the complexity that is the existing communication network on the ground to guarantee the safety of your flight, since the point of departure to the final destination. Today and for some time, the system used to track the route of an aircraft in Brazilian airspace, constitutes a true technological apparatus, consisting of powerful radars and antennas for communication, which has the mission to inform air traffic controllers of each plane positioning within a given space.

Addressing the Pushback Time Allocation Problem at Heathrow Airport

This paper considers the problem of allocating pushback times to departing aircraft, specifying the time at which they will be given permission to push back from their allocated stand, start their engines, and commence their taxi to the runway. The aim of this research is to first predict the delay (defined as the waiting time at the stand or runway) for each departure, then to use this to calculate a pushback time such that an appropriate amount of the delay is absorbed at the stand, prior to starting the engines. A two-stage approach is used, where the feasibility of the second stage (pushback time allocation) has to be considered within the first stage (takeoff sequencing). The characteristics of this real-world problem and the differences between it and similar problems are thoroughly discussed, along with a consideration of the important effects of these differences. Differences include a nonlinear objective function with a nonconvex component; the integration of two sequence dependent separation problems; separations that can vary over time; and time-slot extensions. Each of these factors has contributed to the design of the solution algorithm. Results predict significant fuel-burn benefits from absorbing some of the delay as stand hold, as well as delay benefits from indirectly aiding the runway controllers by reducing runway queue sizes. A system for pushback time allocation at London Heathrow has been developed by NATS (formerly National Air Traffic Services) based upon the algorithm described in this paper.

Human factor modelling for fast‐time simulations in aviation

Purpose – The paper aims to present the findings of a research project “Human Factors in ‘Fast‐Time’ Simulation” which was supported by Central European Air Traffic Services – CEATS Research, Development and Simulation Centre (CRDS) EUROCONTROL.

Integration of Radar System with GPS-Based Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) for Approach Control Separation

The air traffic control system is a vast network of people and necessary navigational equipment that ensures the safe operation of commercial and private aircraft throughout the world. Air traffic controller service is responsible for area, approach and aerodrome control. Aircraft fatal accident data for commercial jet airplanes between 1959 and 2008 show that 36% of the accidents happen in the final approach and landing phase, possibly due to mechanical failure or human error resulting from poor communication between the pilot and air traffic controller. This paper presents an integration of a radar system with a GPS-based Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) for approach control separation between all instrument flight rules (IFR) flights and between IFR flights and visual flight rules (VFR) flights operated as controlled flights. The integration is simulated using MATLAB. Results of the simulation show that aircraft separation is easier and safer than relying only on an air traffic controller. We note, however, that the service of air traffic controllers is still required for successful aerodrome control.

Towards superior air transport performance metrics – imperatives and methods

In order to improve air traffic management service delivery, we need to better characterise and measure performance, through improved metrics. We introduce complexity science and illustrate examples of the additional metrics it may bring to air traffic management. We show how exploring metric variability is preferred to focusing on central tendency. The importance of embracing passenger-centricity is demonstrated. The first results of applying complexity science techniques to the characterisation of actual European passenger trip itineraries are presented, investigating network topologies and vulnerabilities. It is anticipated that on-going work will further contribute to existing research demonstrating the differences between flight-centric and passenger-centric metrics, establishing the better alignment of the latter with key high-level policies in Europe. The specific metric contributions from complexity science remain to be fully proven – although the initial evidence is encouraging.

Managing irregular airport operations

This paper describes the technologies and tools airport operations centre managers, air traffic management service providers or airlines can use to assist in reducing the impact of irregular aircraft operations caused by significant weather events. Because of the variations in events, operations, available infrastructure etc, this paper does not attempt to prioritise the technologies or tools, but discusses the benefits of a shared situational awareness or common operating picture that could be achieved from proper implementation.