Situational Leadership Styles in United States Air Force Air Traffic Control Towers

Leadership in air traffic control facilities is critical to the safe, orderly, and efficient flow of air traffic. The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine the preferred leadership style for United States Air Force air traffic control tower watch supervisors. A panel of 10 functional experts completed a 25 question scenario-based survey to establish a baseline for this study’s four research questions. A purposeful sample of eight control tower chief controllers representing the eight United States Air Force major commands were interviewed and their responses were compared to the mean of the experts panel. The data from the interviews was analyzed and in addition to the straight forward responses to the research questions two themes emerged: (1) the role of the monitor and (2) the apprentice controller’s role in emergency situations. The study discovered that United States Air Force control towers are fully implementing the fundamentals of situational leadership. The eight interviewees’ responses mirrored the expert panels’ answers. The results of this study provide control tower chief controllers, watch supervisors, and future watch supervisors a frame of reference on how situations are handled across the spectrum of facilities

Mitigating Complexity in Air Traffic Control: The Role of Structure-Based Abstractions

Cognitive complexity is a limiting factor on the capacity and efficiency of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. A multi-faceted cognitive ethnography approach shows that structure, defined as the physical and informational elements that organize and arrange the ATC environment, plays an important role in helping controllers mitigate cognitive complexity. Key influences of structure in the operational environment and on controller cognitive processes are incorporated into a cognitive process model. Controllers are hypothesized to internalize the structural influences in the form of abstractions simplifying their working mental model of the situation. By simplifying their working mental model, these structure-based abstractions reduce cognitive complexity.FAA grants 96-C-001 and # 06-G-006

Situational Leadership in United States Air Force Air Traffic Control Towers

On December 17, 1903, the world as man knew it from the dawn of time changed. Orville Wright broke the bounds of Earth's gravity in controlled flight and in slightly more than a century that singular flight manifested into over 18 million annual worldwide flights. As the skies became more crowded it became necessary to develop a means to maintain safety, and the air traffic control profession was born. Developing into what is often considered one of the most stressful occupations, leadership in air traffic control facilities is critical the safe, orderly, and efficient flow of air traffic. The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine the preferred leadership style for United States Air Force air traffic control tower watch supervisors. A panel of 10 functional experts completed a 25 question, scenario based survey to establish a baseline for this study's four research questions. A purposeful sample of eight control tower chief controllers representing the eight United States Air Force major commands were interviewed and their responses were compared to the mean of the experts panel. The data from the interviews was analyzed and in addition to the straight forward responses to the research questions two themes emerged: the role of the monitor and apprentice controller's role in emergency situations. The study discovered that United States Air Force control towers are fully implementing the fundamentals of situational leadership. The eight interviewee's responses mirrored the expert panel's answers. The results of this study provide control tower chief controllers, watch supervisors, and future watch supervisors a frame of reference on how situations are handled across the spectrum of facilities.Aviation & Space Scienc

A Potentially Useful for Airborne Separation in 4D-Trajectory ATM Operations

An aircraft equipped with Airborne Separation Assistance System functions and 4- dimensional trajectory management capabilities can have significant, potentially transforming, value to Air Traffic Management at the local and system levels. This paper discusses how certain vital characteristics envisioned in the Next Generation Air Transportation System enable some Air Traffic Management functions to be distributed to properly equipped aircraft, and it defines and illustrates this equipage level in a potential application. The new equipage level, perhaps the most capable of many levels permitted, enables an effective implementation of both near- and long-term 4-dimensional trajectory operations in complex airspace, with the aircraft providing the near-term tactical functions and conforming to the long-term trajectory attributes coordinated with ground-based Traffic Flow Management authorities. NASA s recent research and development of this proposed aircraft equipage for en-route and terminal-arrival operations is summarized. The role the equipage level may play in addressing key implementation challenges of reducing ground infrastructure cost, building in security and safety, and scaling to traffic demand is discussed

Choice, sorting and ranking in aerial conflict management

International audienceIn the Air Traffic control, many decisions must be taken, quickly. Due to the increase of traffic, these decisions are more and more numerous. It is possible to propose some assistance tools to air traffic controllers in order to help them to make decisions. For that purpose we need to understand how the controllers make these decisions. This paper proposes a knowledge acquisition approach composed of three steps: an analysis of the decision-making process, a multiple criteria methodology, and interviews in order to obtain information, and to develop models. The last part of this paper presents the results we expect to obtain with appropriate interviews and analyse

Knowledge Acquisition for the Creation of Assistance Tools to the Management of Air Traffic Control

International audienceThis paper presents an approach which has for objective to model new tools allowing to help the controllers to assume the incessant increase of the air traffic (actual version of the platform AMANDA V2), as well as help them in the negotiation phase and cooperation with their counterparts of adjacent sector (objectives of the new version of AMANDA). Help them in furnishing some tools able to quickly share information, and to maintain good common situation awareness. An approach is proposed, it is divided in three main phases. A first phase which consists of understand and to model the decision-making process of controllers. The second phase introduces a multiple criteria decision-making methodology. This Methodology has for objective to understand in more details the activities of controllers and the cases of cooperation with adjacent sectors. Finally, the last phase is the operational level of the approach, and consists of an application of repertory grid methodology in order to guide the interviews with the different participants of the study. This will allow realizing the knowledge acquisition, keeping in mind objective to develop new tools. To conclude this paper, the last part presents an example of application of this approach and the first results

Interval Management: Development and Implementation of an Airborne Spacing Concept

Interval Management is a suite of ADS-B-enabled applications that allows the air traffic controller to instruct a flight crew to achieve and maintain a desired spacing relative to another aircraft. The flight crew, assisted by automation, manages the speed of their aircraft to deliver more precise inter-aircraft spacing than is otherwise possible, which increases traffic throughput at the same or higher levels of safety. Interval Management has evolved from a long history of research and is now seen as a core NextGen capability. With avionics standards recently published, completion of an Investment Analysis Readiness Decision by the FAA, and multiple flight tests planned, Interval Management will soon be part of everyday use in the National Airspace System. Second generation, Advanced Interval Management capabilities are being planned to provide a wider range of operations and improved performance and benefits. This paper briefly reviews the evolution of Interval Management and describes current development and deployment plans. It also reviews concepts under development as the next generation of applications

Analysis of Air Traffic Controllers Decisions

International audienceThis paper presents an approach based on a multiple criteria decision making methodology (MCDM) to analyse the decisions of Air Traffic Controllers. This study will allow to model some tools able to assist the controllers in their tasks and particularly able to help them to assume the ceaseless increase of Air Traffic. Currently the platform AMANDA assists controllers on only one sector of control. This platform was very pleasant welcome, and we wish to extend these principles to adjacent sectors, and thus include tool to help the cooperation between adjacent controllers. This analysis is composed of three main points. First it is necessary to determine the decision making process of controllers. The second point consists of the application of the MCDM which guide all the study. And finally a repertory grid technique is applied in order to support the operational aspect of MCDM and to support the interviews. We begin this paper by a presentation of Air traffic Control and the problematic, we present then AMANDA and its principles, and the objectives for the new version. In a third part we describe the approach developed and a real example of its application, the results and analyses that we can deduce of this first grid are also presented. These results must be, of course, confirmed and validated by the controllers

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Delegation of Separation in NextGen Airspace

The purpose of this thesis was to determine the feasibility of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) performing delegated separation in the national airspace system (NAS). Delegated separation is the transfer of responsibility for maintaining separation between aircraft or vehicles from air navigation service providers to the relevant pilot or flight operator. The effects of delegated separation and traffic display information level were collected through performance, workload, and situation awareness measures. The results of this study showed benefits related to the use of conflict detection alerts being shown on the UAS operator\u27s cockpit situation display (CSD) and to the use of full delegation. Overall, changing the level of separation responsibility and adding conflict detection alerts on the CSD were not found to have an adverse effect on performance as shown by the low amounts of losses of separation. The use of conflict detection alerts on the CSD and full delegation responsibilities given to the UAS operator were found to create significantly reduced workload, significantly increased situation awareness and significantly easier communications between the UAS operator and air traffic controller without significantly increasing the amount of losses of separation

A Multi-Agent Approach for Designing Next Generation of Air Traffic Systems

This work was funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant TEC2011-28626 C01-C02, and by the Government of Madrid under grant S2009/TIC-1485 (CONTEXTS)