Sectorless ATM — A concept to increase en-route efficiency

Abstract

Feasibility of a new air traffic management concept is examined which might increase the efficiency of en-route operations by up to 100%. The concept follows the idea of a sector-less airspace organization. Aircraft entering the airspace (e.g. the German airspace or the entire European Airspace) will be assigned to one controller who is in charge of controlling the aircraft from entry point (or TMA exit point) to exit point of the airspace (or TMA entry point). First simple real time simulations revealed very promising results. The concept seems to enable an easy transition into a user preferred trajectory (direct-to) operations whilst at the same time increasing ATCO's efficiency and airspace capacity.

Sectorless ATM and advanced SESAR concepts: Complement not contradiction

“…Currently the concept is investigated further in the research project LRM2020. The present state of research has been reported by Korn et al [6] and Pütz et al [7].…”

“…The simulations showed that in principle it is possible to control air traffic in such a way and that various benefits can be expected from such an approach. For a detailed description of the simulations and their results see Korn et al [6].…”

“…In order to maintain situational awareness, amongst others, a new type of situation display and conflict alerts is required. Figure 2 shows the experimental controller radar display setup which was used in the LRM2020 simulations by Korn et al [6]. In this example four aircraft are under the control of one ATCo, each aircraft's vicinity is displayed in one radar tile.…”

Balancing controller workload within a sectorless ATM concept

“…However, not every aircraft produces the same workload-level changes or a high probability of conflict resolution activities tend to produce higher ATCO workload. Therefore, the second distribution strategy chosen is the uniform allocation of ATCO workload (2). Workload is an important part for the sectorized concept in determining sector capacity needed by the air traffic flow management (ATFM), which is described in [6] and [7].…”

“…Figure 1 depicts the main elements of the concept and how they interact with each other. The concept itself, the simulation environment and some first results are presented in [2] and (Pütz 2009 ''Handbuch für das sektorlose Lotsenkonzept--Luftraummanagement 2020'' V1.3 DFS). The module of Flight Plan Processing creates the initial 4D-profiles and sends them with some updates for previous profiles to the Assignment Center module.…”