The integration of remotely piloted aircraft system in non-segregated airspace requires a significant effort and new methodologies to underway this challenge. This paper develops a methodology to assess the impact of remotely piloted aircraft system integration by applying safety metrics in tactical planning. This methodology builds five modules to simulate remotely piloted aircraft system introduction in a conventional-aircraft schedule: Base scenario, path modelling, conflict detection, temporary-blocking window and safety metrics. The safety metrics quantify the safety state of the operation by the number of conflicts, the conflict severity and the airway availability. This last safety metric represents a step forward in the decision-making process because it provides the airway risk-suitability to integrate remotely piloted aircraft system. Moreover, the temporary-blocking window underlies the airway availability metric. This concept provides temporary restrictions to the integration of remotely piloted aircraft system depending on the entry times of the conventional aircraft. Finally, this methodology is applied in an air traffic volume of the Spanish upper airspace. Different simulations were performed by introducing remotely piloted aircraft system covering every airway of the airspace. Results provided the temporary-blocking windows that specified the temporary restrictions to remotely piloted aircraft system introduction as a function of the airway flown by the conventional aircraft. Furthermore, the methodology appraised the airway availability characterising the airways depending on the risk impact by the remotely piloted aircraft system.
The expected growth of air traffic in the following decades demands the implementation of new operational concepts to avoid current limitations of the air traffic management system. This paper focuses on the strategic conflict management for four-dimensional trajectories (4DT) in free-route airspace. 4DT has been proposed as the future operational concept to manage air traffic. Thus, aircraft must fulfil temporary restrictions at specific waypoints in the airspace based on time windows. Based on the temporary restrictions, a strategic conflict management method is proposed to calculate the conflict probability of an aircraft pair (that intersects in the air) and to calculate temporary-blocking windows that quantify the time span at which an aircraft cannot depart because one conflict could occur. This methodology was applied in a case-study for an aircraft pair, including the uncertainty associated with 4DT. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was performed to characterise the impact of wind conditions and speed control on the temporary-blocking windows. The results concluded that it is feasible to propose 4DT strategic de-confliction based on temporary-blocking windows. Although, uncertainty variables such as wind and speed control impact on the conflict probability and the size of the temporary-blocking windows.
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