SESAR members and partners came together over the week 12 September at London Heathrow Airport to demonstrate the benefits offered by SESAR’s airport operations centre (APOC) through gaming techniques. Using a 3D computer simulation of the airport, the APOC gaming exercise mimicked the airside and landside processes at Heathrow, allowing APOC stakeholders to test responses to new working procedures and disruptive operational events.
The gaming specifically focused on airside processes relating to air traffic management and landside processes relating to passenger flow. For the purpose of the simulation, APOC scenarios were developed for the airport operations manager (AOM) to work with the Heathrow APOC aircraft flow cell (Aircraft Flow Manager, Heathrow Traffic Coordinator and Stand Allocation Unit), the Passenger Flow Manager (PFM) and an airspace user (British Airways). In these scenarios the stakeholders could play out various disruptive situations, sharing a common situational awareness and making decisions collaboratively.
The gaming showed just how effective this SESAR Solution is for improving the overall airport performance using collaborative procedures. The gaming exercise was run within the context of SESAR Project 06.03.01 in collaboration between Heathrow Airport with its SEAC partners, Eurocontrol and external partners Airbus Safran Launchers, and Airport Research Center GmbH.
“It’s great to see this work coming together – it is a significant achievement for the partners collaboratively working together in the SESAR Programme, said Mark Burgess, Head of ATM & ATC. At Heathrow we see many opportunities to deploy this technology to improve operations, to support training and to manage disruption. We want to do everything we can to encourage further development and bring these operational solutions to the market place.”
“The APOC gaming exercise exceeded my expectations in terms of the overwhelmingly positive response from representatives across the Heathrow stakeholder community, including operational front-line staff who took part in the exercise – colleagues from the APOC, NATS, British Airways and UK Border Force," said Andy Knight, ATM & Airside Development Manager. "It was clear that the gaming approach to validation provides an immense benefit in allowing each stakeholder to understand the impact of their decisions on other operational units. The powerful visualisation provided by the gaming platform provides an immediate and greatly enhanced situational awareness for stakeholders.”
"This successful SESAR validation exercise supports Heathrow airport define future applications for its Airport Operation Centre," said Bob Graham, Head of Eurocontrol Airport Research. "Undertaking the exercise in Heathrow with our mobile validation platform ensured key operational staff involvement whilst Heathrow senior management and the SESAR Airport partners, SEAC, could evaluate future investment benefits."
Achieving high-performing airport operations
The APOC solution is part of a broader set of solutions (key feature) aimed at increasing the performance of airport operations, in line with the vision of the European ATM Master Plan.
View other solutions within this key feature