Browsing by Author "Gatsinzi, Dany"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Development of a new method for ATFCM based on trajectory-based operations(SAGE, 2017-09-03) Gatsinzi, Dany; Saez Nieto, Francisco Javier; Madani, IrfanThis paper discusses a possibility to evolve the current Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management towards a more proactive approach. This new method focuses on reducing the expected probability of air traffic control intervention based on “hot spot” identification and mitigation at strategic level by applying subliminal changes on the times of arrival at the crossing or merging points (junctions). The concept is fully aligned with the trajectory-based operation principles. The approach assumes that the changes on the times of arrival only demand small speed changes from the involved aircraft. In this study, the hot spots are defined as clusters of aircraft expected to arrive to the junctions. Two aircraft are said to be in the same cluster if their proximity and closure rate are below a given threshold. Some exercises are proposed and solved by applying this method. The obtained results show its ability to remove the potential conflicts by applying simple linear programming. This approach seeks to change the current capacity limiting factor, established by the number of aircraft occupying simultaneously each sector, to another parameter where the level of traffic complexity, flowing towards junctions, is identified and mitigated at strategic level. The speed changes, used as the control variable and computed before or during the flight, are designed to provide an adjustment on aircraft’s required time of arrival at the junctions in order to have a de-randomised and well-behaved (conflict free) traffic. This will enable improvements in airspace capacity/ safety binomial. It is recognised that this measure alone is unable to produce a conflict free airspace, and then other collaborative and coordinated actions, such as adjusting and swapping departing times at the departing airports (before the aircraft are taking off), offsetting some flights from nominal route, and allowing multi-agent separation management (while they are in flight) should be applied together with this method.Item Open Access ECAC use case of optimised pre-tactical time of arrival adjustments to reduce probability of separation infringements(Elsevier, 2018-07-19) Gatsinzi, Dany; Saez Nieto, Francisco Javier; Madani, IrfanCurrently, a maximum allowable number of aircraft (A/C) entering and or within a sector for a given period is fixed. Anytime this threshold is reached, involved A/C are regulated by Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management (ATFCM) to maintain an acceptable Air Traffic Controllers’ (ATCOs’) workload. This threshold is determined regardless of particular expected air traffic complexity, which may result from potential conflicts inherently in A/C’s flight plans that may greatly affect the ATCOs’ workload. This paper proposes a new ATFCM Demand and Capacity Balancing (DCB) methodology, applied to mitigate potential conflicts between A/C’s trajectories at pre-flight level, in order to reduce the current ATCO’s workload attributed to Separation Management (SM) interventions. This purpose is achieved through minor adjustments on A/C’s Times of Arrival (TOAs) at conflicted en-route junctions. The adjustments of A/C’s TOAs are implemented through minor changes on A/C’s speed profile, applied before and after each conflicted junction, while maintaining each A/C’s departure and Targeted Time of Arrival(TTA) at destination. The paper postulates that these TOA adjustments could be easily transformed into pre-tactical ATFCM DCB measures, assuming that ATFCM will issue Reference Business Trajectories (RBTs) containing time constraints at junctions, introduced to reduce the probability of conflicts. A case study of European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) air traffic network using real flight plan data is presented to show the validity of the methodology.Item Open Access A method of ATFCM based on trajectory based operations.(2018-09) Gatsinzi, Dany; Sáez Nieto, Francisco Javier; Mandani, IrfanThis thesis describes a method towards a more proactive approach for Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management (ATFCM) Demand and Capacity Balancing (DCB). This new ATFCM DCB method focuses on reducing the expected Air Traffic Control (ATC) Separation Management (SM) tactical interventions. It is based on the identification of “hotspots” and mitigating them at pre-flight phase by applying minor adjustments on aircraft’s Times of Arrivals (TOAs) at points of conflict located at en-route crossing and merging junctions (hotspots). The adjustments of TOAs are achieved through optimal speed changes in aircraft speed profiles, applied before and after each junction whilst maintaining each aircraft’s flight time and the entropy of the whole traffic network. The approach postulates that the TOA adjustments may be transformed into a pre-tactical ATFCM DCB measure. This can be achieved by translating TOA adjustments into time constraints at junctions, issued by the Network Manager (NM) in the Reference Business Trajectories (RBTs) to produce de-randomized and well-behaved (conflict free) traffic scenarios to reduce the probability of conflicts. Several real high-density scenarios of the current and forecasted traffic in European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) airspace network are simulated using specialized modelling tools to validate the method. A novel Linear Programming (LP) optimisation model is formulated and used to compute optimal speed changes that remove all conflicts in the scenarios with minimum cascading effect. This method should enable a reduction in ATC workload, leading to improvements in airspace capacity, flight and network efficiency as well as safety. This approach is fully aligned to Trajectory Based Operation (TBO) principles. As a holistic solution, this new ATFCM DCB method should change the conventional capacity-limiting factor, currently established by the number of aircraft simultaneously entering each sector (sector count) to another factor where the level of traffic complexity, flying towards junctions is identified and mitigated at pre-flight phase.