Contingency management concept generation for U-space system

Contingency management in aviation is a vital concept that ensures safety, security, and efficiency in operations. To fully benefit from the envisioned Advanced Air Mobility system, the need of a structured and system-wide contingency planning will be even more important since the air transportation system paradigm will shift into a highly automated system that includes high-density traffic. The complexity will increase considerably by enlarging the operations to the underserved urban areas. Therefore, the new system needs to provide a more agile, accessible, and flexible environment. In this paper, the need of a contingency management from a holistic approach is described and the base requirements to build such a system are defined by considering the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder that are defined for the U-space system. Alongside the defined requirements, the tasks of the stakeholders and the expected main contingency sources are explained to have a better understanding of the system. The objective of this work is to provide the base guidelines that help to set appropriate actions by relevant stakeholder under an adverse condition which might compromise the safety and security of the operations within the air traffic network

Preflight Contingency Planning Approach for Fixed Wing UAVs with Engine Failure in the Presence of Winds

Preflight contingency planning that utilizes wind forecast in path planning can be highly beneficial to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) operators in preventing a possible mishap of the UAV. This especially becomes more important if the UAV has an engine failure resulting in the loss of all its thrust. Wind becomes a significant factor in determining reachability of the emergency landing site in a contingency like this. The preflight contingency plans can guide the UAV operators about how to glide the aircraft to the designated emergency landing site to make a safe landing. The need for a preflight or in-flight contingency plan is even more obvious in the case of a communication loss between the UAV operator and UAV since the UAV will then need to make the forced landing autonomously without the operator. In this paper, we introduce a preflight contingency planning approach that automates the forced landing path generation process for UAVs with engine failure. The contingency path generation aims true reachability to the emergency landing site by including the final approach part of the path in forecast wind conditions. In the contingency path generation, no-fly zones that could be in the area are accounted for and the contingency flight paths do not pass through them. If no plans can be found that fulfill reachability in the presence of no-fly zones, only then, as a last resort, the no-fly zone avoidance rule is relaxed. The contingency path generation utilizes hourly forecast wind data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the geographical area of interest and time of the flight. Different from past works, we use trochoidal paths instead of Dubins curves and incorporate wind as a parameter in the contingency path design