As traffic rises, airports face the challenge of more ground operations and surface traffic moving across runways, taxiways and aprons. In addition to safety initiatives driven by ICAO, a series of automation tools have been developed by SESAR partners to provide valuable safety nets in this area. As part of advanced surface movement guidance and control systems (A-SMGCS) activities, new generation automation systems have been included in validations to see how various tools can operate together to provide integrated airport safety nets.
These validations assessed the relevance of alerts to tower controllers in case of conflicting clearances (e.g. line up and landing clearances given at the same time on the same runway) and in case of mobile behaviour (i.e. aircraft or vehicle) not complying with ATC instructions or procedures. The introduction of electronic flight strips in many control towers means that instructions given by a controller are available electronically and can be integrated with other data such as flight plan, surveillance, routing and published rules and procedures.
The integration of this data allows the system to monitor the information and alert the controller when inconsistencies are detected. This solution highlights potential conflicts much sooner than current safety nets for runway operations which rely only on surveillance data to trigger an alarm. Moreover, the automatic conflicting ATC clearances (CATC) alert system can be configured to detect non-conformance to ATC instructions or procedures anywhere in the movement area. This SESAR solution is available for industrialisation. These airport safety nets are part of synchronised deployment plans across Europe, and as of 22 have been implemented in Istanbul airport,Heydar Aliyev International Airport and Václav Havel Airport Prague.
It should be noted that the airport safety nets conflicting ATC clearances (CATC) and conformance monitoring alerts for controllers (CMAC) that were developed in Solution #02 have been incorporated and expanded on where necessary in solution "Extended airport safety nets for controllers at A-SMGCS airports" (PJ.02-W2-21.1). As a consequence, please check both solutions and their specificities to determine which one best fits your needs.
SJU references: #02/Release 5
Benefits
-Increased situational awareness
-Improved safety on and around the runway
Datapack