DAVID KAMINSKI-MORROW / MAASTRICHT & DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Dutch study suggests cockpit crew could take responsibility for airborne separation even in dense traffic, using ADS-B
Pilots could easily take over the task of airborne separation from air traffic controllers, even in high-density airspace, according to research from the Dutch aerospace research laboratory (NLR).
Speaking at the Jane's ATC Maastricht Conference in the Netherlands last month, NLR air traffic management department chief Jan Terlouw said that "sooner or later the responsibility for separation assurance should be transferred from controllers to pilots".
The conclusion comes from a "pilot in the loop" study into future air traffic management (ATM) in a "free-flight" environment using automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B). The experiment involved 24 graduate and near-graduate pilots from the KLM Flight Academy using simulators, and followed six years of research into free-flight concepts involving tactical airborne separation assurance in busy airspace by pilots rather than air traffic controllers. "Pilots could easily fly their preferred routes," he says. "The number of conflicts was low because the pilots used the conflict prevention support. Sometimes there were slight deviations to avoid conflicts - but otherwise the pilots [were able to keep to their course]."
The pilots were provided with horizontal and vertical displays of traffic information, including resolution advisory tools, that would depend on all aircraft using ADS-B. They "flew" in airspace traffic densities up to three times those typically found in Europe, including complex airspace geometries, but Terlouw says they had no difficulty.
The inevitability of this change, Terlouw insists, results from the need for greater airspace capacity and thus more efficient use of airspace, at the same time as maintaining or improving safety. Ground-based tactical separation on the present model depends to a large extent on a route network, he says, which means that much of the sky is not used. In future, he says, the air traffic service providers' role "will shift from separation assurance to strategic resource management" - in other words, overall traffic flow-rate management.
Terlouw says he does not consider the sample study to be proof, but that it indicates self-separation is feasible.
Source: Flight International
