As the airspace network and the airports become more connected, opportunities open up to smooth traffic flow and prevent imbalances between demand and capacity. This SESAR solution allows more intelligent demand and capacity balancing when traffic demand for landing into an airport exceeds the airport capacity (hotspot), by allowing the arrival airport to participate in the decision-making process of how to resolve the situation.
The solution aims at complementing departure regulations, such as the calculated take-off time (CTOT), with the dissemination of locally-generated target times, over the hotspot. Each airport collaborates with terminal area control to develop its own strategy to allocate the available landing capacity. Strategies are likely to take into account airspace users’ input, the consistency of flight plans with seasonally-allocated airport slots, arrival route and runway allocation, or gate and connection management. This collaborative process contributes to a more coherent approach to demand regulation, which is expected to result in a reduced number of knock-on delays thereby benefitting passengers and airlines, as well as the network.
Another aspect of this SESAR solution is based on a greater level of information sharing between the Network Manager and flight operators. Whenever a flight is issued with a regulated take-off time, the airline also receives from the Network Manager the corresponding target time to arrive at the capacity-constrained area that motivated the regulation of its departure time. While target times are hard constraints, it is expected that the shared awareness will increase the effectiveness of air traffic flow management regulations. During the flight, any deviations between the agreed targets and the actual flight may be used by the different partners (flight crew, aircraft operator, local traffic managers) to support adherence to the time of entry in the congested area(s) and/or to assess and monitor the effects of deviations. Live trials validated its feasibility with input from all actors involved.
The trials included communicating planned measures (such as take-off and arrival time) as well as tactical measures imposed to maintain planned performance. The trials are also testing the use of sharing the same network view of the situation.
This solution is available for industrialisation and is part of synchronised deployment plans across Europe.The solution has already been implemented in Denmark, Latvia and Maastricht UAC.
SJU references: #18/Release 5
Benefits
- Improved information sharing
- Enhanced predictability
- Improved situational awareness
- Increased capacity
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