Air Traffic Research Articles

Performance-based surveillance time delay parameters calculation methods and evaluation practice

Abstract ICAO introduced the Performance-Based Surveillance (PBS) framework in 2020 to define performance requirements for surveillance systems in various operational environments. PBS allows flexibility in considering different surveillance system designs or technologies, facilitating system improvement and deployment. Implementation of PBS technology can significantly enhance aviation safety, increase airspace capacity, optimize resource allocation, improve energy efficiency, and reduce emissions, aligning with global aviation goals. However, the evaluation of time-related parameters within the PBS framework poses challenges, as methods for evaluation are not included in the ICAO PBS manual. This paper explores theoretical methods, practical implementations, and data analysis regarding critical time-related parameters in China’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system, namely HPMDA, PAMDA, IDMUD, and FSMUD. These methods have been accepted and included in the ICAO PBS manual.

Analysis of Communication Effectiveness on Parking Stand Arrangements by the Apron Movement Control (AMC) Unit and Air Traffic Controller (ATC) of Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport

Analysis of Communication Effectiveness on Parking Stand Arrangements by the Apron Movement Control (AMC) Unit and Air Traffic Controller (ATC) of Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport

Optimizing Air Traffic Management in Europe by the introduction of the Single European Sky

Europe´s airspace is facing an arduous situation due to its congestion, which leads to multiple delays and inefficient flights. Introducing the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management (SESAR) initiative will conquer a transformative shift in Europe´s Air Traffic Management (ATM), achieving more optimised and sustainable routes throughout the continent. Therefore, through the successful implementation of the SESAR initiative, we will enhance the performance of Europe´s ATMs in capacity, safety, efficiency, and sustainability. This paper evaluates Europe´s current airspace and highlights the positive impacts of the initiative in the different areas of improvement. Utilising current data provided by the airlines, qualitative methods are applied to prove the effect that SESAR will achieve on different routes. The research results demonstrate how introducing the SESAR will reduce flight distance, fuel consumption, and emissions. In conclusion, this research emphasises the significance of implementing the SESAR to update air traffic control throughout Europe. The aviation industry is experiencing a modernisation that is expected to result in lower operating costs, fewer delays, and a reduction in the environmental impact of their flights.

An improved transformer‐based model for long‐term 4D trajectory prediction in civil aviation

AbstractFour‐dimensional trajectory prediction is a crucial component of air traffic management, and its accuracy is closely related to the efficiency and safety of air transportation. Although long short‐term memory (LSTM) or its variants have been widely used in recent studies, they may produce unacceptable results in long‐term prediction due to the iterative output that accumulates error. To address this issue, a transformer‐based long‐term trajectory prediction model is proposed here, which utilizes the self‐attention mechanism to extract time series features from historical trajectory data. For long‐term prediction scenarios, we a trajectory stabilization module is introduced to ensure the stationarity of the time series for better predictability. Additionally, the transformer output strategy is improved to generate the prediction sequence by a single step instead of serial dynamic decoding, thus effectively enhancing the precision and inference speed. The proposed model is validated using real data obtained from China's Southwest Air Traffic Management Bureau. The experimental results demonstrate that this model outperforms the benchmark model. Further ablation experiments and visualizations are performed to analyze the impact of trajectory stabilization and one‐step inference strategy.

Association rule mining of aircraft event causes based on the Apriori algorithm

To reveal complex causes of aircraft events, this paper aims to mine association rules between the trigger probability and relative strength via a modified Apriori algorithm. Clustering is adopted for data preprocessing and TF–IDF value calculation. Causative item sets of aircraft events are obtained based on the accident causation 2–4 model and are coded to establish code indicators. By avoiding the use of statistical methodologies to resolve not-a-number (NaN) values for altering the interrelations among causes, an enhancement in the Apriori algorithm is proposed by considering frequent items. By extracting frequent patterns, in this paper, all the association rules that satisfy three perspectives (support, confidence and lift) are determined by constantly generating and pruning candidate item sets. A network graph is used to visualize the association rules between different unsafe events and all types of causes. Finally, 9835 representative pieces of data, including general unsafe events, general incidents and serious incidents from the Southwest Air Traffic Management Bureau, are selected for analysis. The results show that improper energy allocation, poor conflict resolution ability, inadequate onsite management duties, adoption of a luck mentality, and occurrence of controller oversight are highly correlated with general unsafe events, and failure to rectify incorrect recitation is notably correlated with general incidents, while inadequate manual promotion, lack of conflict judgement and insufficient safety management are strongly correlated with serious incidents. This study quantitatively reveals the potential patterns and characteristics of mutual interactions among various types of historical aircraft events and highlights directions for controllable prevention and prediction of aircraft events.

Analysis of Damage to Network Time Protocol (NTP) Server on Cengkareng Radar Equipment in Perum LPPNPI Branch JATSC

The On The Job Training (OJT) program which will be implemented in 2022-2023 also includes collaboration with the LPPNPI Jakarta Air Traffic Service Center (JATSC) Branch Office. On The Job Training (OJT) involves various divisions that handle various equipment and facilities that support aviation safety, including equipment such as the Network Time Protocol (NTP) Server used to synchronize the time of equipment connected to the server network at the Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center (JATSC), thereby ensuring accurate operating times for all connected equipment. All of these efforts aim to improve safety and efficiency in aviation at the national and international levels. However, in this case, in operation, not all equipment always runs well, as does Network Time Protocol (NTP) server 1 at the LPPNPI Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center (JATSC) Branch. The purpose of this research is that the author wants to solve the problems that occur in On The Job Training (OJT) activities at Perum LPPNPI Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center (JATSC) Branch.

Develop Model Harmonization ATFM and A-CDM with Integrated Policy Network Supporting Air Traffic Services

Develop Model Harmonization ATFM and A-CDM with Integrated Policy Network Supporting Air Traffic Services

0329 Cleared for Takeoff: Sleep Leadership Training for Air Traffic Control Instructors

0329 Cleared for Takeoff: Sleep Leadership Training for Air Traffic Control Instructors

FIR agreement Indonesia – Singapore: What are the legal implications?

This paper explores the implications of Indonesia's agreement to delegate the Flight Information Region (FIR) of air navigation services to Singapore, specifically in the airspace of the Riau and Natuna islands, as stated in Presidential Regulation Number 109 of 2022. Using the normative juridical method, this study examines the intricate details of the agreement, with a focus on its potential legal consequences for Indonesia's national and international obligations.Although Indonesia retains sovereignty over its territory, this analysis scrutinizes the nuanced provisions of the agreement and their implications, particularly in terms of the technical aspects of air traffic services provided by the Singapore Air Traffic Services Provider above Indonesia's territories, which the agreement does not explicitly delineate the responsibilities or shared consequences in law. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate Indonesia's increased responsibility under the new agreement and emphasize the importance of a careful approach to its implementation. By exploring the multifaceted dimensions of national and international interests, this study seeks to highlight the imperative for Indonesia to navigate the agreement prudently.Ultimately, this analysis aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Indonesia's obligations, potential challenges, and essential considerations under the renewed agreement of 2022, underscoring the significance of a balanced approach in safeguarding Indonesia's interests on both national and international fronts.

Analisa Dampak Sambaran Petir pada Peralatan NDB JTM-30C di Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center

This study analyzes the impact of lightning strikes on the NDB JTM-30C equipment at the Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center (JATSC). NDB equipment is used in flight navigation, but lightning strikes can disrupt operations and flight safety. Data on lightning strikes and disturbances to the NDB were collected and analyzed. The results show a relationship between the frequency of lightning strikes and disturbances to the NDB. These disturbances can affect signal quality, cause temporary outages, or result in permanent damage to the equipment. The potential impact poses risks to flight safety and operational performance. Mitigation measures, regular maintenance, and early warning systems should be implemented to reduce the risks of disturbances caused by lightning strikes. This research provides a better understanding and a foundation for effective mitigation strategies to enhance flight safety.

Analysis of Helicopter Movement Procedures in Air Traffic Services

This study is aimed at providing advice for Perum LPPNPI Branch Banda Aceh to regulate helicopter traffic more efficiently. By using the observation method for approximately three months in Perum LPPNPI Branch Banda Aceh, there were several cases that could support the advice in order to increase the efficiency of helicopter traffic. Based on the cases, the solution for the issue concerned is by providing entry point that can act as reporting point for helicopters in the airspace of Aceh.

Review of Radio Communication Range to Air Traffic Services

OJT activity is an activity of the Higher Education Tridharma (Education, Research and Community Service) which aims to get to know and add insight and scope of work according to the field of assignment, as well as as an encouragement to cadets to be able to work individually or work in a team competently. the data carried out in this research is based on the author's observations and data on the ATS Operational Logbook Unit Approach Control Procedural Airnav Tarakan Branch from September to December 2022, so as to obtain results. In carrying out their duties, ATC really needs situational awareness related to matters regarding ATC internal and external conditions. Based on the author's observations during OJT, traffic conditions at Juwata International Airport are very high. However, the radio communication range used by ATC is less than optimal, causing consequences that can interfere with the comfort of flight traffic services.

Fuzzy decision-making model for solving the ISAO “risk triangle” in conditions of violation of air-craft separation norms.

Taking into account the prevailing influence of the human factor on the occurrence of the vast majority of aviation events and serious incidents, the leading role of such a component of the current ISAO flight safety concept as “the attitude of aviation personnel towards dangerous actions or conditions” has been determined, which well explains the mutual influence of other components of this paradigm. In turn, the components of this relationship are determined through indicators of the influence of the human factor on decision-making by frontline aviation operators, in particular air traffic controllers. This approach is logical, since, firstly, the professional activity of an air traffic controller is easy to imagine as a continu-ous chain of decisions; secondly, according to statistics, unwanted aviation events are the result of false decisions; thirdly, the vast majority of aviation security experts believe that the point is not that “front line” aviation operators do not make decisions at all, but that these decisions are untimely, incor-rect, ineffective, etc. In the context of this publication, such a component of decision making is considered as fuzzy risk as-sessment models, in particular violations of standard operating procedures, namely aircraft separation standards. Using the modifier “very” and the methodology of fuzzy mathematics, a scale (term set) of the linguistic variable “danger level” was formed. The dimension of the scale is larger than that recommended by ISAO, which allows for a more detailed analysis of the dangers of violations of separation standards. On the other hand, scale reduction does not cause difficulties in the conditions of using fuzzy operations of “concentration”, “stretching”, “merging”. Having adapted the well-known “Cooper-Harper scale” for research needs, a survey was conducted of professional air traffic controllers m = 70, employees of the Unified Air Traffic Control System of the Republic of Azerbaijan, who expressed their attitude to the dangers of violations of the separation norms of ACC, ARR aircraft S = 20 km in the form of a “point on the parameter scale”, which contributed to the use of the so-called “hint matrix” for constructing membership functions of the linguistic variable “hazard level” with smooth falling fronts. It has been established that all points of intersection of the membership functions of neighboring terms of the linguistic variable “hazard level” are greater than the “transition point” of L. Zadeh, therefore the distances between them, established on the continuum of the studied separation norm, “rather belong” to the corresponding linguistic assessment of the established scale. The reduction of this scale to the ISAO dimension contributed to the solution of the corresponding “risk triangle”.

Effect of Adding Gateways on Air Traffic Flows Over the North Pacific Ocean

Effect of Adding Gateways on Air Traffic Flows Over the North Pacific Ocean

Untangling Complexity in ASEAN Air Traffic Management through Time-Varying Queuing Models

Free route airspace allows airspace users to freely plan a route in en-route airspaces within certain restrictions. It is anticipated to offer the benefit of fuel saving and operational flexibility. Regarding its efficient implementation into the ASEAN airspace, the key challenge would be reducing hotspots with clusters of potential conflicts. This paper designed a time-varying queuing network model, which contributed to untangle trajectory complexity in the most congested hotspot area. A series of fast-time simulation experiments were conducted to identify hotspots in en-route airspace in Singapore FIR. The application of departure time control using time-varying queuing networks successfully reduced up to 45% of potential conflicts. This was achieved within an average delay of 30 min by controlling time of less than 60% of candidate flights. The original contribution of this paper is to develop a novel modeling and simulation framework for composing ideal air traffic patterns. Lastly, we discussed the extension of this study toward a generalized application of the proposed approach in future air traffic management.

Mediated by job satisfaction (Empirical Study: Employees of Perum Indonesian Aviation Navigation Service Provider Jakarta Air Traffic Services Center Branch)

The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of the work environment and leadership style on employee loyalty with job satisfaction as a mediating variable in Perum LPPNPI JATSC Branch Office. This study used a quantitative approach. The survey was conducted to 180 respondents with the criteria that respondents were employees of Perum LPPNPI JATSC Branch Office. Data was analyzed with Structural Equation Model (SEM) and data processing using Partial Least Square (PLS) approach with SmartPLS program version 4.0. The results showed that the variables of work environment, leadership style and job satisfaction had a positive and significant influence on employee loyalty. In addition, the work environment and leadership style also have a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction. The results of indirect influence testing show that the job satisfaction variable mediates the relationship between the work environment and employee loyalty and also mediates the relationship of leadership style to employee loyalty. This research provides practical implications for companies to always pay attention to the work environment and leadership style used by their leaders so that employees can work safely and comfortably so that employee loyalty and job satisfaction can increase

SISTEM PENANGKAL PETIR DI GEDUNG TELEKOMUNIKASI DAN GEDUNG PAI MATSC

On Friday, 11 November 2022, there was damage to the radio link equipment in the HF and MSSR radio transmitter communication systems due to a lightning strike operating at the Makassar Air Traffic Service Center (MATSC) office. This lightning strike is a phenomenon that poses a threat to the operation of flight navigation services carried out by the MATSC branch of Perum LPPNPI. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the external lightning protection system that has been installed and also to determine the effectiveness of the conventional lightning protection system on the antenna tower next to the MATSC radio PAI building. This study uses quantitative research methods. Retrieval of data using the method of observation and measurement. The calculation results found that the PAI Building was included in category IV, meaning that the lightning strike hazard level is 80%. While the antenna tower has a protection level category III, which means it has a danger level of 90%. However, from the observations, only the tower antenna is provided with a conventional type of lightning rod, while the PAI Building does not have a lightning rod system. The calculation results show that the existing conventional lightning rod protection angle is around 35o with a protection radius of 16.58 m. So that with this radius, the PAI building does not fully get protection from the dangers of lightning strikes.
 
 Keywords: Lightning Protection System, Antenna Tower, PAI MATSC Building

A First Look at Exploiting the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract Protocol for Open Aviation Research

The OpenSky Network has accumulated air traffic data for research for over a decade, with sensor registrations increasing from a few to over 6000. Recent enhancements have included the addition of data sources such as Mode S, FLARM, and VHF to the initial collection, which started only with the Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) technology. However, the growth of the crowdsourced network has predominantly occurred in developed nations, leaving extensive inhabited regions, but also remote areas such as oceans and mountains, with lacking coverage.
 To address this issue, the deployment of Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Contract (ADS-C) technology offers a potential remedy. ADS-C is an advanced surveillance system that utilizes an aircraft's onboard systems to automatically transmit crucial information, including position, altitude, speed, navigation intentions, and meteorological data. Different from ADS-B, ADS-C transmits contract data via satellite to specific Air Traffic Services Units (ATSU) or Aeronautical Operational Control (AOC) facilities, contributing to a more comprehensive and global approach to air traffic monitoring.
 In this paper, we describe the background of ADS-C and implement a resource-intensive data collection. We analyse 227,126 messages collected over 4 months and find that they can be an excellent complementary data source for researchers working with aviation data.

An Automatic Speaker Clustering Pipeline for the Air Traffic Communication Domain

In air traffic management (ATM), voice communications are critical for ensuring the safe and efficient operation of aircraft. The pertinent voice communications—air traffic controller (ATCo) and pilot—are usually transmitted in a single channel, which poses a challenge when developing automatic systems for air traffic management. Speaker clustering is one of the challenges when applying speech processing algorithms to identify and group the same speaker among different speakers. We propose a pipeline that deploys (i) speech activity detection (SAD) to identify speech segments, (ii) an automatic speech recognition system to generate the text for audio segments, (iii) text-based speaker role classification to detect the role of the speaker—ATCo or pilot in our case—and (iv) unsupervised speaker clustering to create a cluster of each individual pilot speaker from the obtained speech utterances. The speech segments obtained by SAD are input into an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine to generate the automatic English transcripts. The speaker role classification system takes the transcript as input and uses it to determine whether the speech was from the ATCo or the pilot. As the main goal of this project is to group the speakers in pilot communication, only pilot data acquired from the classification system is employed. We present a method for separating the speech parts of pilots into different clusters based on the speaker’s voice using agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC). The performance of the speaker role classification and speaker clustering is evaluated on two publicly available datasets: the ATCO2 corpus and the Linguistic Data Consortium Air Traffic Control Corpus (LDC-ATCC). Since the pilots’ real identities are unknown, the ground truth is generated based on logical hypotheses regarding the creation of each dataset, timing information, and the information extracted from associated callsigns. In the case of speaker clustering, the proposed algorithm achieves an accuracy of 70% on the LDC-ATCC dataset and 50% on the more noisy ATCO2 dataset.

Identification of Psychological Conditions and Feelings of Fatigue Among Employees at Makassar Air Traffic Service Center

Air Traffic Control (ATC) remains an active field of work during the pandemic due to the demand from domestic and international travelers. It is crucial for controllers to prioritize both their mental health while on duty and their body's immunity against conditions that make them vulnerable to Covid-19. Therefore, this study aims to review psychological conditions, feelings of fatigue, and quality of life among ATC during the pandemic. A cross-sectional descriptive design was used and the participants were 89 ATC in Makassar Air Traffic Service Center. The data collected included the general characteristics of ATC, DASS-21, KAUPK2, and (WHOQOL)-BREF. Data were collected from February to March 2022, then analysis was carried out using SPSS and Excel software. The results indicated the presence of negative emotional conditions among ATC even outside of their normal traffic control duties. Approximately 24% of ATC reported feelings of fatigue, while the quality of life exhibited a wide distribution of data, ranging from moderate to low. Therefore, it was concluded that the health status of ATC, even with regulations limiting the amount of traffic related to the pandemic period, still needs special attention to maintain performance.