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NASA NTRS · 20140009593

Scheduling and Separating Departures Crossing Arrival Flows in Shared Airspace

Chevalley, Eric·Parke, Bonny K.·Lee, Paul·Omar, Faisal·Lee, Hwasoo·Beinert, Nancy·Kraut, Joshua M.·Palmer, Everett
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Abstract

Flight efficiency and reduction of flight delays are among the primary goals of NextGen. In this paper, we propose a concept of shared airspace where departures fly across arrival flows, provided gaps are available in these flows. We have explored solutions to separate departures temporally from arrival traffic and pre-arranged procedures to support controllers' decisions. We conducted a Human-in-the-Loop simulation and assessed the efficiency and safety of 96 departures from the San Jose airport (SJC) climbing across the arrival airspace of the Oakland and San Francisco arrival flows. In our simulation, the SJC tower had a tool to schedule departures to fly across predicted gaps in the arrival flow. When departures were mistimed and separation could not be ensured, a safe but less efficient route was provided to the departures to fly under the arrival flows. A coordination using a point-out procedure allowed the arrival controller to control the SJC departures right after takeoff. We manipulated the accuracy of departure time (accurate vs. inaccurate) as well as which sector took control of the departures after takeoff (departure vs. arrival sector) in a 2x2 full factorial plan. Results show that coordination time decreased and climb efficiency increased when the arrival sector controlled the aircraft right after takeoff. Also, climb efficiency increased when the departure times were more accurate. Coordination was shown to be a critical component of tactical operations in shared airspace. Although workload, coordination, and safety were judged by controllers as acceptable in the simulation, it appears that in the field, controllers would need improved tools and coordination procedures to support this procedure.

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Chevalley, Eric, Parke, Bonny K., Lee, Paul, Omar, Faisal, Lee, Hwasoo, Beinert, Nancy, Kraut, Joshua M., Palmer, Everett. 2013-10-06. Scheduling and Separating Departures Crossing Arrival Flows in Shared Airspace. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140009593

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NASA NTRS2014

Development of a Route Crossing Tool for Shared Airspace Environments

In current-day Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) operations, departure and arrival controllers maintain separate and dedicated airspace for their respective traffic flows. Although this practice has obvious safety features, it also leads to inefficiencies; for example, departure aircraft may be routinely capped beneath arrival airspace. With the right decision-support and coordination tools, departures could continue to climb through arrival airspace when sufficient gaps exist. Previous studies of ‘shared airspace’ have examined pre-arranged coordination procedures, as well as tools that gave feedback to the controllers on where gaps between arrivals were located and whether the departure aircraft could be scheduled to fly through those gaps [1, 2, 3, 4]. Since then, the Route Crossing Tool (RCT) has been developed to allow controllers to assess multiple pre-defined route options at points where the arrivals and departures cross, thereby increasing the possibility of climbing a departure through an arrival gap.The RCT aids in ensuring lateral separation between departure and arrival aircraft that pass through the same altitude. Since the RCT can be applied tactically, it can enable aircraft to fly through arrival flows even if these aircraft depart outside scheduled times. The RCT makes use of a set of predefined parallel departure routes crossing the arrival flow at equidistant intersecting points on the arrival route. The RCT uses the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of the departure aircraft at each intersecting point to calculate the lateral separation with the neighboring arrivals when it crosses that point; this information is graphically displayed to the controller. Additionally, the RCT incorporates forecast winds in its ETA predictions.Multiple prototypes of the RCT have been iteratively developed with feedback from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). This paper presents the final design, the design process, and lessons learned. Initial results from a simulation suggest that the tool was successful in helping controllers to safely climb more aircraft. Controller feedback on the tool was also positive.

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