/ Cooperative Air Traffic Management - Phase 1
C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept / Date: 06/02/2005
Version: 1.2
Status: Draft

Cooperative Air Traffic Management

Phase 1

C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept
Deployable From 2012
Version 1.2
Programme: / Sixth Framework Programme
Contract No.: / TREN/04/FP6AES/S07.29954/502911
Project No.: / FP6-200X-XXX
Project Title: / Cooperative Air Traffic Management (C-ATM) Phase 1
Deliverable No.: / D1.1.1
Document Title: / (Vision) C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept
Document ID: / CATM-WP111-ERC-HLOC-D111-V0120
Version: / 1.2
Date: / 06/Feb/2005
Status: / DRAFT
Classification: / Internal
Filename: / CATM-WP111-ERC-HLOCD-D111-V0120
Approval Status
Authors / Responsible Partner Verification / Project Approval
AFR, DLH, EEC, NATS / EEC / Project Management Board
(PMB)
Michel Stirnman, Volker Rothmann, Robert Graham, Ray Dowdall, Ros Eveleigh, / Franck Ballerini
Document Change Log /
Release / Author/ Organisation / Date of the Release / Description of the Release / Modifications – Sections Affected and Relevant Information
(See attached comment sheet) /
1.0 / EEC/R Graham / Dec/2004 / First Version / New
1.1 / EEC/R Graham / Dec/2004 / Update with editorial changes / All
1.2 / EEC/R Graham / Feb/2005 / Update with User Group input / All
DISTRIBUTION LIST
Company / Short Name / Country / Name of Project Manager
AIRBUS France / AIRBUS / France
Entidad Pública Empresarial Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea / AENA / Spain
Thales ATM / TATM / France
Alenia Marconi System S.p.a. / AMS / Italy
BAE SYSTEMS Avionics Limited / BAES / United Kingdom
Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH / DFS / Germany
Deutsche Lufthansa AG / DLH / Germany
Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. / DLR / Germany
Direction de la Navigation Aérienne / DNA / France
Eurocontrol / EEC
INDRA Sistemas / INDRA / Spain
Ingeniera y Economia del Transporte / INECO / Spain
Ingeniera de Sistemas para la Defensa del España / ISDEFE / Spain
Luftfartsverket / LFV / Sweden
Stichting Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium / NLR / The Netherlands
Consorzio Sistemi Innovativi per il Controllo del Traffico Aereo / SICTA / Italy
Société Française d'Etudes et de Réalisations d'Equipements Aéronautiques / SOFREAVIA / France
Thales Avionics S.A. / Thales Avionics / France
NATS En Route Ltd / NATS / United Kingdom
Luchtverkeersleiding / LVNL / The Netherlands
Alitalia S.p.a. / AZA / Italy
ENAV S.p.a. / ENAV / Italy


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 What is Co-operative Air Traffic Management (C-ATM)? 1

1.2 Purpose of the Concept Document 1

1.3 Background 1

1.4 External Influences 1

2. European ATM System Today - CONSTRAINTS 2

3. Co-operative Air Traffic MANAGEMENT – concept drivers 3

4. PrincipAl C-atm elements 3

4.1 Gate to Gate 3

4.2 ATM Processes 3

4.2.1 Layered Planning 4

4.2.2 Airline and Airspace User Operations Processes 4

4.2.3 Military Operations Processes 5

4.2.4 Network Management 5

4.2.5 Airport Processes 5

4.3 Network Operations and 4D Plans 6

4.3.1 Network Operations Plan 6

4.3.2 4D Plan 7

4.3.3 Managing the Network Operations Plan and 4D Plan 7

4.4 Airspace Configurations 7

4.5 System Wide Information Management and Collaborative Processes 8

4.6 Data Link 8

4.7 Airborne Separation Assistance Systems - ASAS 8

4.8 ASAS and the 4D Plan 8

4.9 Separation Responsibility 8

5. mode of operation 9

5.1 Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management, and Airspace Management 9

5.1.1 Strategic Phase 9

5.1.2 Pre-Tactical Phase (Optimised) 10

5.1.3 Tactical Phase 10

5.2 Airport Operations 11

5.2.1 Arrival-taxi phase 13

5.2.2 Pre-departure phase 13

5.2.3 Departure-taxi phase 14

5.3 Departure, En-Route and Terminal Operations 14

5.3.1 Local Traffic Management (Synchronisation) 14

5.3.2 Air Traffic Control (Separation Management and Synchronisation) 15

5.4 Post-Flight Analysis 18

6. Significant Changes and Future Evolution 18

7. expected benefits 19

ANNEXES

A: Abbreviations and Acronyms
B: Glossary
C: References

C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept V1.2 - Page i Internal

This document was developed by members of the C-ATM consortium under contract to the European Commission. Its content cannot be reproduced or disclosed in any form without prior written authorisation, to be requested from the C-ATM Project Co-ordinator.

© Copyright 2004 – All Rights Reserved

/ Cooperative Air Traffic Management - Phase 1
C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept / Date: 06/02/2005
Version: 1.2
Status: Draft


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Cooperative Air Traffic Management (C-ATM) is a research concept for the air transport industry, targeting deployment from 2012. The prime objectives are to contribute to improving safety and the use of available capacity in all weather conditions, creating additional capacity, better management of uncertainty, and enhancing the efficiency of Air Traffic Management processes.

A doubling of traffic is predicted by 2020 by which time the major European airports are expected to be unable to cater to demand. Unchecked, this traffic forecast will exacerbate system uncertainty and lack of integrated processes leading to increased delay and unacceptable cost.

The C-ATM mode of operation focuses on a collaborative air and ground integrated ATM system that is predictive and coherent, aiming to deliver aircraft consistently according to user schedules and agreed traffic sequences, with predefined scenarios that cater for degraded situations.

To fulfil these aims, the ATM system must disseminate high quality information, contained in a Network Operations Plan. The plan will cover strategic planning, scheduling, flow, air traffic, airport, military, airline and aircraft information, and 4-dimensional flight data.

The airport is the key resource in the ATM network and the mode of operation integrates airport procedures that optimise the plan by managing collaborative arrival, departure, taxiway and runway processes, and incorporate the aircraft turnaround.

A layered planning process will cover air and ground partners strategic and tactical collaborative planning. The network operations plan will be the backbone of this process, developed to cover all phases of flight with the objective of improving efficiency, predictability and timely notification of degraded performance.

Unit workload per aircraft will be reduced through improved separation management and traffic synchronisation processes that are supported by 4D traffic planning, decision support systems and data link communications enhancing ground system performance through aircraft intent data.

Airborne separation assistance will permit task sharing between the controller and flight crew, although separation management will remain a ground responsibility. Safety will be reinforced through improved situation awareness in the cockpit.

The main changes envisaged by Cooperative Air Traffic Management include:

·  Layered Planning / ·  Introduction of reconciled 4D air and ground data
·  Network Operations Plan / ·  Increased use of existing aircraft navigation capabilities
·  Integration of the Airline Operating Centres and Military Airspace Management cells into ATM / ·  Change in both pilot and controllers roles and perspective towards an integrated managed ATM system

The concept provides the ability to increase use of data link to further integrate the Flight Management System and ground based flight data processing systems.

The introduction of Airborne Separation Assistance procedures integrates the pilot into the ATM system permitting future increased pilot responsibility with regard to separation management.

C-ATM represents an opportunity to evolve towards a fully integrated and tactically managed ATM system exploiting the potential of system support in a closed loop environment.

C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept V1.2 - Page i Internal

This document was developed by members of the C-ATM consortium under contract to the European Commission. Its content cannot be reproduced or disclosed in any form without prior written authorisation, to be requested from the C-ATM Project Co-ordinator.

© Copyright 2004 – All Rights Reserved

/ Cooperative Air Traffic Management - Phase 1
C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept / Date: 06/02/2005
Version: 1.2
Status: Draft

C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept V1.2 - Page i Internal

This document was developed by members of the C-ATM consortium under contract to the European Commission. Its content cannot be reproduced or disclosed in any form without prior written authorisation, to be requested from the C-ATM Project Co-ordinator.

© Copyright 2004 – All Rights Reserved

/ Cooperative Air Traffic Management - Phase 1
C-ATM High-Level Operational Concept / Date: 06/02/2005
Version: 1.2
Status: Draft

1.  INTRODUCTION

1.1  What is Co-operative Air Traffic Management (C-ATM)?

Cooperative Air Traffic Management (C-ATM) is a research concept for the air transport industry, targeting deployment from 2012. The prime objectives are to contribute to improving safety, the use of available capacity in all weather conditions, creating additional capacity, better management of uncertainty, and enhancing the efficiency of Air Traffic Management processes.

The concept integrates current research and although it does not open up new research, it provides a step to evolve towards a 2020 vision through concepts identified in the Eurocontrol Operational Concept Document(1) (OCD) and Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe Strategic Research Agenda 2(2) (ACARE SRA2).

C-ATM concept development is scoped around the following themes:

·  Separation management supported by Airborne Separation Assistance System (ASAS);

·  4D based co-operative flight management;

·  Collaborative traffic flow management and collaborative decision making (CDM).

C-ATM deliverables and validation results will contribute to the SESAME programme.

1.2  Purpose of the Concept Document

This document describes the holistic high-level mode of operation proposed for research by C-ATM. It provides the top-down framework for the project’s operational concept, and user and technical requirements and system architecture.

1.3  Background

C-ATM is a research project supported by the European Commission’s Directorate General, Transport and Energy, within the 6th Framework Programme.

The Programme is supported by a “User Group” composed of airlines, airports and air navigation service providers ensuring a wide airspace-user industry representation.

1.4  External Influences

The project draws on: the Eurocontrol Operational Concept Document the OCD volume 2 Concept of Operations(3) documents under development for the years 2011 (3) and the Dynamic Management of European Airspace Network concept of operation, DMEAN(4) and all recent European Commission ATM research and Trans European Networks-Transport (TEN-T) projects, in particular Leonardo(5), Aircraft in Future ATM Systems(6) & More Autonomous-AFAS(7), Gate to Gate(8), Mediterranean Free Flight(9).

2.  European ATM System Today - CONSTRAINTS

With expansion in global economic activity, increasing traffic demand has resumed; forecast increases suggest at least a doubling of traffic by 2020(1) 3-5% pa(10) which will lead to airport(11) and en-route congestion with a significant increase in traffic restrictions.

The main focus of the ground based European operational concept is set at sector level with different methods of operation across Europe. The Performance Review Report number 8(12) (PRR8) suggests that “raising controller productivity and support costs to 3rd best achieved levels in Europe would improve cost-effectiveness by 56% and 23% respectively. Every 10% improvement in cost-effectiveness is worth some €700M per annum”.

The lack of predictability and warning of events exacerbates problems related to the flow of traffic en-route and in terminal airspace; furthermore airspace users and ATM service providers optimise their operations independently leading to inefficiency.

The lack of predictability means that Central Flow regulation and slot action taken to protect sectors from overload can lead to inefficiency and a significant loss of slots.

PRR8 identified flight-efficiency “as a major contributor to ATM performance: en-route horizontal inefficiencies alone are estimated at €1,000M - €1,500M per annum”. Furthermore, it suggests that “improved predictability of air transport would generate high added-value: compressing half of flight schedules by 5 minutes on average would be worth some €1,000M per annum in better use of airline and airport resources”.

Lack of integrated processes and procedures together with long lead times to implementation of new infrastructure has meant significant pressure on gates, taxiways and runways at peak times with an associated impact on airspace user operations.

Currently capacity constrained airports use stacks and extended approach patterns to maintain pressure on runways. Tactical traffic management that smoothes in-bound flows need to be developed in order to improve the airport capacity-delay trade-off by minimising such delays while maintaining runway throughput.

Considering the above, the C-ATM mode of operation concentrates on the following limitations:

·  Capacity, sector productivity, support costs;

·  Information distribution and fragmented and uncoordinated decision making processes;

·  Lack of European ATM integration, disparate processes and non uniform services;

·  Airport arrival, departure, taxiway and aircraft turnaround processes;

·  Adverse weather affecting surface and airspace operations;

·  Poor use of existing technology and operational capability.

The challenges that need to be dealt with when addressing these constraints include the need to increase safety, to be cost efficient and to take account of increasing environmental concerns.

Although outside of the scope of the C-ATM project it must be recognised that the social issues concerning trends towards automation and changes in the ATM working environment should be resolved in parallel with system evolution to ensure it’s safe and correct functioning. Furthermore, it is important that security issues are addressed to ensure a “secure” ATM system.

3.  Co-operative Air Traffic MANAGEMENT – concept drivers

If we acknowledge that the ATM system operates in an inherently non-deterministic environment and it can be strongly influenced by random factors such as weather outside its control then an ambition for a fully deterministic ATM system is unrealistic.

Taking this into account, C-ATM mitigates the random effects through staged planning and information sharing, creating a more predictive ATM system whose goal is to consistently deliver aircraft according to planned user schedules and agreed sequences, based on a shared gate-to-gate plan but with predefined scenarios to cater for degraded situations.

Based on this statement, C-ATM is driven by the following guidelines:

·  Integrate all stakeholders – distribute up-to-date Information to permit participation in decision making processes better understanding of how the system is performing.

·  Predictable and stable delivery system where all stakeholders know how to react when the system degrades – jointly planned and managed processes to provide predictability, whilst globally agreed scenarios help manage degraded situations and non-nominal events.