Das Point Merge Verfahren

Dieses Dokument hat zum Ziel, einen Überblick über das Point Merge Verfahren und dessen Umsetzung in Deutschland und Europa zu geben. Es ist inhaltlich an das Dokument „D3.1.1 Konzept flexiGuide-Luftraumstruktur“ angelehnt, in dem das Point Merge Verfahren im Kapi-tel „State of the Art“ beschrieben und anhand des Flughafens Oslo-Gardermoen erläutert wurde. In einer Erweiterung zu flexiGuide soll nun zusätzlich ein von der EUROCONTROL entwickeltes und an vielen Flughäfen getestetes Anflugverfahren – das sogenannte Point Merge Verfahren – in dieser flexiGuide-Luftraumstruktur berücksichtigt werden. Die von flexiGuide angestrebte Luftraumstruktur ist eine zukunftsweisende Entwicklung, bis zu deren Ziel noch diverse Zwi-schenstufen genommen werden müssen. Eine davon wird das Point Merge Verfahren sein. Um eine höhere Integration der flexiGuide-Luftraumstruktur zu ermöglichen, wird nun in er-gänzenden Arbeiten untersucht, inwieweit die Luftraumstruktur des Point Merge Verfahrens in die flexiGuide-Luftraumstruktur verlustfrei integriert werden kann. Die folgenden Kapitel geben einen Überblick über das Konzept und dessen Relevanz, über die Umsetzung an den Flughäfen Oslo und Dublin und über die Versuche an den Flughäfen Rom und Paris. Es werden Verbesserungen hinsichtlich Reduzierung der Umweltbelastung und der Kapazitätserhöhung aufgezeigt. Weiterhin werden die Erfahrungen eingebracht, die mit dieser neuen Luftraumstruktur von Piloten und Fluglotsen gemacht wurden und abge-schätzt, welche Entwicklungen in der Zukunft zu erwarten sind

Functional Analysis of DLR's Decision Support Tools for Arrival, Departure, and Surface Operations

This document introduces a functional analysis of the decision support tools of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for air traffic controllers in the area of arrival, departure and surface management. DLR and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) initiated a cooperation that comprises research collaborations in the areas of surface management and runway management under the title of “Coordinated Arrival/Departure/Surface Operations“. For the area of runway management the focus lies on the analysis whether an integrated capability between NASA’s Tactical Runway Configuration Management system and DLR’s arrival/departure and surface management systems is possible and beneficial for both sides. To serve a harmonized view of DLR’s decision support tools for arrival, departure and surface management on one hand and NASA’s runway configuration management system on the other hand both partners agreed on conducting the analysis of an integrated capability with functional flow block diagrams. The DLR decision support tools are extracted from the mutual integration analysis and described here

Towards Higher Level of A-SMGCS: Handshake of Electric Taxi and Trajectory-Based Taxi Operations

This paper focuses on newly developed alternative ground propulsion systems of aircraft for airport surface operations and their dependencies with decision support tools for air traffic controller in the airport tower. Both issues refer to functionalities from the Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) concept specifically the route planning and guidance functions. The route planning functionality generates the optimal surface movement plan for every aircraft. This plan consists of conflict-free optimized routes with associated speed values called four dimensional taxi trajectories (4DT). The 4DT must be generated by dedicated planning systems that support the air traffic controller in their daily work. Several research studies have shown that the implementation of trajectory-based taxi operations mainly depends on the ability of the aircraft to follow the optimal surface movement plan which is still a challenge. The guidance functionality primarily addresses the support of pilots and vehicle drivers equipped with displays for increased situation awareness especially in low visibility conditions. However, ICAO’s A-SMGCS manual also states that predetermined taxi speeds have to be maintained so that a timely arrival at the runway holding position and at the stands can be ensured. Autonomous engine-off taxi technologies with electric engines - called eTaxi - is an alternative ground propulsion system (AGPS) that promises to accomplish this performance. At the same time, AGPS are able to reduce the environmental impact, through less noise and emissions, and the economic impact, through less fuel consumption, while taxiing. This paper addresses the research question of how AGPS and trajectory-based taxi operations are interdependent. As a starting point to answer this research question, two conceptual investigations are conducted. First, the trajectory-based taxi operations concept is reviewed. Second, the investigation of necessary ATC procedures to manage aircraft with autonomous engine-off taxi technologies is considered. Both processes have to be considered in order to develop a viable concept of e-taxi

Using Segmented Standard Taxi Routes to Integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Civil Airports

Cargo airlines and other aircraft operating agencies are interested in commercially exploiting and benefiting from the technical possibilities provided by unmanned aircraft systems. Use cases could be long-range unmanned air transport, flight calibration, or surveillance missions. It is natural that, depending on weight and size, unmanned aircraft are going to use the existing ground infrastructure together with manned aircraft. But it is also a well-known fact that remotely piloted or automatic / autonomous unmanned aircraft do not have the same abilities and behavior than manned aircraft. A way has to be elaborated to achieve a safe, orderly and expeditious flow of a mixed traffic constellation even when more than one unmanned aircraft are involved in aerodrome operations at the same time. Unfortunately, due to a lack of international standardization and regulation, it is still unknown which abilities a commercial unmanned aircraft will have. This makes it very difficult to define operational procedures already. In the frame of the SESAR 2020 project ‘Surface Management Operations’ (SuMO), a procedural concept for ground movements of unmanned aircraft together with manned aircraft was elaborated. This concept uses so called segmented standard taxi routes and aims at realizing mixed traffic with an equal level of safety compared to pure manned traffic as well as very low system requirements for unmanned aircraft systems. In November 2017 this concept was validated together with Tower Controllers, Conventional Pilots, Remotely Piloted Aircraft Operators and an air traffic management expert from the German Air Navigation Service Provider DFS in a gaming workshop over several days; covering departures, arrivals and non-nominal situations like C2 link loss or lost communication. Results showed that this concept likely allows a first and easy integration of unmanned aircraft systems and it was rated as very practical and realistic. This paper gives basic information about the procedure of segmented standard taxi routes, briefly describes the used validation methodology and illustrates first results, closing with a short discussion and an outlook

Using Segmented Standard Taxi Routes to Integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Civil Airports

Cargo airlines and other aircraft operating agencies are interested in commercially exploiting and benefiting from the technical possibilities provided by unmanned aircraft systems. Use cases could be long-range unmanned air transport, flight calibration, or surveillance missions. It is natural that, depending on weight and size, unmanned aircraft are going to use the existing ground infrastructure together with manned aircraft. But it is also a well-known fact that remotely piloted or automatic / autonomous unmanned aircraft do not have the same abilities and behavior than manned aircraft. A way has to be elaborated to achieve a safe, orderly and expeditious flow of a mixed traffic constellation even when more than one unmanned aircraft are involved in aerodrome operations at the same time. Unfortunately, due to a lack of international standardization and regulation, it is still unknown which abilities a commercial unmanned aircraft will have. This makes it very difficult to define operational procedures already. In the frame of the SESAR 2020 project ‘Surface Management Operations’ (SuMO), a procedural concept for ground movements of unmanned aircraft together with manned aircraft was elaborated. This concept uses so called segmented standard taxi routes and aims at realizing mixed traffic with an equal level of safety compared to pure manned traffic as well as very low system requirements for unmanned aircraft systems. In November 2017 this concept was validated together with Tower Controllers, Conventional Pilots, Remotely Piloted Aircraft Operators and an air traffic management expert from the German Air Navigation Service Provider DFS in a gaming workshop over several days; covering departures, arrivals and non-nominal situations like C2 link loss or lost communication. Results showed that this concept likely allows a first and easy integration of unmanned aircraft systems and it was rated as very practical and realistic. This paper gives basic information about the procedure of segmented standard taxi routes, briefly describes the used validation methodology and illustrates first results, closing with a short discussion and an outlook

Opportunities and Challenges When Implementing Trajectory-Based Taxi Operations at European and U.S. CDM Airports

This paper investigates opportunities and challenges when implementing trajectory-based taxi operations at airports dependent on the availability of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes in Europe and the U.S. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) jointly developed a concept of operations for trajectory-based taxi operations. An essential prerequisite of this concept is that adequate information sharing processes referring to collaborative decision making are available. CDM concepts like Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and Surface Collaborative Decision Making (S-CDM) were introduced by EUROCONTROL and the FAA, respectively, to improve the use of the available airport infrastructure. Both concepts aim to improve the efficiency of airport operations by reducing congestion on the airport surface, improving the traffic flow efficiency, and reducing uncertainties during airport operations. Both concepts are compared in this paper with a focus on taxi operations and the impact on the stakeholders. This paper provides an answer to the question which opportunities and challenges might be faced with the implementation of trajectory-based taxi operations at airports with A-CDM and S-CDM. Especially from the perspective of involved stakeholders, their operational objectives that are partially contradicting to each other are discussed. It is shown that both CDM processes generally leverage the implementation of trajectory-based taxi operations. However, there are still existing gaps that are identified and addressed based on current research in the area of airport surface traffic optimization towards trajectory-based taxi operations

Workflow Structure of ATC in Non-nominal Conditions - Introduction and Initial Conceptual Approach

This document describes an approach to define and categorize non-nominal situations and possible impacts on air traffic controller tasks based on literature research. Further countermeasures are discussed on how to handle these situations. After describing the definitions and differences between non-nominal conditions and non-nominal situations, the EUROCONTROLs ASSIST processing model for controller in emergencies is introduced along with published procedures for air traffic control. After that the workflow structure between pilots and controllers in these situations is illustrated. A workflow model to handle non-nominal situations is introduced and applied for one use case. To give an example for the workflow model, the use case bird strike into one engine of a two engine aircraft during take-off is described. For this example, some possible assistance functionalities for air traffic controllers and for pilots are listed and shortly discussed

Performance Evaluation of Conflict-Free Trajectory Taxiing in Airport Ramp Area Using Fast-Time Simulations

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been collaborating to conduct joint research addressing future surface traffic management challenges. The surface management tool from DLR, called Taxi Routing for Aircraft: Creation and Controlling (TRACC), was adapted to be integrated in NASA’s fast-time simulation environment called Surface Operations Simulator and Scheduler (SOSS). The research described in this paper 1) applied TRACC to trajectory-based ramp traffic management, where TRACC generates conflict-free aircraft trajectories in a congested ramp area, 2) investigated the feasibility of the concept through the integrated TRACC-SOSS fast-time simulation, and 3) evaluated the performance of the integrated system. For this activity, TRACC was adapted for ramp operations at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, called TRACC_PB (TRACC for pushback optimization). TRACC_PB provides four-dimensional taxi trajectories with a command speed profile for each aircraft following standard taxi routes within the ramp area. In this study, departures are given the Target Movement Area entry Times (TMATs) provided by the baseline surface metering scheduler based on NASA’s Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA). TRACC_PB also calculates optimal pushback times for departures, as well as the times when arrivals shall enter the ramp, the Target Movement area Exit Times (TMETs). The initial results showed that the TRACC_PB successfully generated conflict-free trajectories for the ramp area taxi operations and improved taxiing efficiency compared to the baseline results. TRACC_PB aimed to provide conflict-free taxi routes avoiding any stops while taxiing. This resulted in longer gate hold times for departures and postponed throughput values compared to the baseline simulation without trajectory optimization. Having conflict-free routes without stoppage also created shorter taxi times but required renegotiation of the given TMATs. TRACC_PB also achieved reductions in both fuel consumption and engine emissions (17% for departures and 10% for arrivals), which correlate with the ramp taxi time reduction

Functional Analysis for an Integrated Capability of Arrival/Departure/Surface Management with Tactical Runway Management

Both the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and NASA have developed concepts and tools to improve atomic aspects of coordinated arrival/departure/surface management operations and runway configuration management. In December 2012, NASA entered into a Collaborative Agreement with DLR. As part of collaborative research in the "Runway Management" area, which is conducted with the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance, located in Braunschweig, the goal is to develop an integrated system comprised of the three DLR tools - arrival, departure, and surface management (collectively referred to as A/D/S-MAN) - and NASA's tactical runway configuration management (TRCM) tool