“The trajectory based operational (TBO) concept is probably the most important air traffic management concept since the introduction of radar services,” said Razvan Bucuroiu, Head of Airspace and Capacity Division at EUROCONTROL. “It involves all stakeholders working together from planning to operations, along with the implementation of datalink and air-ground trajectory exchanges, allowing a realtime exchange of the latest situation of the aircraft’s trajectory, including intentions.”
TBO has for years been recognised globally as the next major technical advance in air traffic management (ATM), improving predictability, increasing capacity and reducing aviation’s environmental footprint in all parts of the world. For Europe, it should mean a 100% increase in average sector capacity, going up from the current 45 flights per hour in many sectors to 97 flights per hour while reducing the average working time to manage 100 flights by 50%, according to figures presented at the Global TBO Symposium held in EUROCONTROL’s headquarters in June 2024 (see below: EUROCONTROL hosts first Global TBO Symposium ).
Implementing TBO is a complex global challenge and one in which EUROCONTROL is playing a pivotal role. The final concept of operation needs to be agreed globally. Air-ground datalink technologies will need to be refined to allow for real-time trajectory and intent information to be shared between all the operational stakeholders. Then the roll-out programme will have to be managed across all stakeholder groups: air navigation service providers (ANSPs), airspace users, airports and computer flight planning service providers (CFPSPs), among others.
“In Europe we are moving faster than many other regions,” said Razvan Bucuroiu. “We already have an agreed vision of what TBO should look like, aligned with ICAO’s vision, and shared between technical and political European institutions. The concept is fully embedded in the Single European Sky vision and the European ATM Master Plan. There is still some R&D and standardisation work to be done before implementation. But we can see from some of the work the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) is doing on developing the first steps of a more enhanced datalink that controllers and pilots can work with these new procedures and the network benefits calculated during our simulation exercises are not just wishful thinking.”