Spare airspace capacity can become available even at peak traffic times, but there are few tools available today to take advantage of this. Air traffic management systems can detect high traffic density, but do not – as yet – find alternative solutions to ease congestion. By adapting airspace configurations, this latent capacity can be used to help meet demand at peak times.

This SESAR automated solution considers the traffic needs, and groups or ungroups airspace sectors to match capacity with evolving demand. The support tool is used by the supervisor to determine sector planning on the day of operations and to manage staff resources accordingly. The result is better use of airspace and human resources, improved safety due to early management of constraints, and fewer delays.

During the validation activities, the automated support for dynamic sectorisation tool was used by the supervisor and flow manager to evaluate the most suitable en-route sector configuration and related staffing needs. The tool takes into account several information sources. These include demand data, including actual flight data as well as planned data; local constraints such as staff availability; and unplanned events such as bad weather or changes as a result of actions at other airports.

The validation of dynamic sectorisation showed that traffic capacity increased by 10 % during peak periods,
while the number of delayed flights fell by 5 %. In addition, because the tools provided advanced warning,
the air traffic management system was better prepared to manage these situations safely. The improved situational awareness avoided demand and capacity imbalances and enabled controllers to handle more flights per sector even during busy periods.

This solution is ready for industrialisation and is part of synchronised deployment plans across Europe. To date the solution has been implemented in the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Ukraine

Benefits

• Improved safety due to increased situational awareness of supervisors
• Increased capacity due to better use of available resources, both human and airspace
• Reduced saturation periods and flight delays
• Increased cost efficiency

Datapack

• Contextual Note
• Regulatory overview
• OSED
• SPR
• OCD
• SAR
• TS 
• INTEROP
• IRS
• GEN
• CBA
• Human Perf
• Demonstration report
• Validation Report
• Service description
• SWIM compliance
• Security assessment