SubscribeAt the ATC Maastricht 2006, which took place from 14th to 16th February 2006, delair Air Traffic Systems GmbH and the Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH presented their cooperatively designed arrival and departure manager.
Their performance including the arrival and departure manager and the real-time simulation was highly appreciated by the trade visitors.
The cooperative arrival and departure manager, which was developed on the basis of operational systems, has passed tests for the first time. In order to handle the ever growing traffic volumes, planning systems for arriving and departing air traffic have been put into operation at large airports over the past few years.
These systems reduce controller workload by suggesting to the controller the most efficient sequence of arrivals and departures. While the arrival manager handles the processes between the preceding area control and approach control units, the departure manager coordinates the processes between apron and tower control, airlines and handling agents.
By optimising the sequence of arrivals and departures, the cooperative arrival and departure manager is the next step in integrating processes and helps to focus traffic handling on meeting the airlines' requirements.
To test how controllers work with the planning systems, a control centre simulator and a tower simulator had to be linked on an integrated simulation platform.
Using this platform, it is now possible to test the entire process chain from the controllers in the control centre, to approach controllers, tower controllers, right down to apron controllers. This involves using up to eleven controller working positions to assess all interdependencies. The linked simulators are a permanent part of air traffic controller training and on-the-job training at DFS.
The groundwork in developing the cooperative arrival and departure manager is funded by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology within the scope of the third aviation research programme.
