AART

Airside, airport and runway throughput

Improving the efficiency and resilience of arrival and departure operations at capacity-constrained airports

The SESAR PJ02 Wave 2 Airside, Airport and Runway Throughput (AART) project aims to improve the efficiency and resilience of arrival and departure operations at capacity-constrained airports and access to secondary airports by delivering operational and technical improvements to enhance infrastructure and increase traffic throughput whilst providing environmental benefits and preserving safety.

AART consists of 31 solutions that are deployable independently. The solutions are categorised into five different work packages (WP) that address human, technical, procedural and performance aspects relating to proposed improvements.

Objectives

Work package 3 (WP3) consists of three solutions and covers the implementation of curved GNSS based operations in medium-high complexity TMA operations and up to large airport operations. Using more GNSS and advanced PBN curved approach and departure procedures together with the development of new support tools for ATC and airspace design concepts will increase TMA efficiency and lead to increased runway throughput, predictability and environmental benefits in terms of noise reduction.

Work package 4 (WP4) consists of 13 solutions which aim to refine separation minima as a function of the operational conditions, so improving efficiency and increasing runway throughput in capacity constrained airports whilst maintaining, even potentially improving, safety and the environmental impact.

Enhanced Arrivals Procedures (EAP) will allow for runway throughput gains whilst providing potential environmental benefits. The Static Pairwise Wake Separations matrices for arrivals and departures developed in the Wave 1 of the project will be expanded while the methodology will be refined to cover additional aircraft. Furthermore, the safety case will be developed to support regulatory approval and facilitate deployment.

WP4 also covers arrival and departure solutions that use new and advanced technologies and/or big data/machine learning (BD/ML) techniques to further optimise separation minima (both wake and runway occupancy time) depending on more accurate, dynamic flight and/or environmental data. Advanced technologies and/or BD/ML techniques will also be used to further develop tools to improve separation delivery; this includes separation delegation to the flight crew, as well as controller support tools.

Work package 5 (WP5) consists of seven solutions which aim to improve the availability and accessibility of airports with limited infrastructure in low visibility conditions. Availability and accessibility are challenges for those airports since they are typically not well equipped for supporting traffic in adverse weather conditions. Alternative Ground Surveillance will increase runway safety and will include both ATC and A-FIS requirements as a more cost-efficient and flexible ATS provision. From an airborne perspective, Enhanced Flight Vision System and Synthetic Vision Guidance System, Combined Vision System and LPV-100 capability will enable approach and landing in low visibility conditions. procedures and at the LHR airport of TBS operations is a direct result of SESAR 1 development and validation. These two operational procedures are among the earliest and most significant operational improvements resulting from the collaboration between partners in SESAR 1.

Work package 6 (WP6) consists of six solutions which aim to improve predictability and safety. The extension of the A-SMGCS routing functions will improve tactical conflict management in the taxi phase. Optimised Routing and Planning will deliver more accurate taxi times, improve predictability, minimise delays and ATCO's workload. Automation, A-CDM and Datalink will support conflict management and hence improve safety.

Work package 7 (WP7) consists of two solutions: a ground based solution ‘Enhanced Runway Condition Awareness for Runway Excursion Prevention’ and an airborne solution ‘Support Tools for pilots for better prevention of Runway Excursions and monitoring of A/C trajectory’. Both solutions aim to detect, prevent and alert on risks of runway excursions by synchronising air-ground information exchange about runway surface condition, therefore providing safety benefits.

Expected results

The operational feasibility and acceptability and associated benefits of the curved instrument flight procedures developed for each of the three solutions together with the prototype system support tools will be validated at the V2 level of maturity based on the results of four real-time simulations.

The management of advanced curved arrival and departure operation should improve the efficiency of runway and TMA operations as well as flight efficiency, and increase predictability in TMA operations as seen from a ground perspective while having a positive impact on the environment, including noise benefits. The use of geometric altitude in the initial, intermediate and final phases of Instrument Approach Operations, combined with curved operations, will enable optimum flight trajectories and increase safety, efficiency and predictability, while reducing the workload of Air Traffic Controllers and Flight Crews compared to today’s operations.
 

The results of the flight simulation and real time ground based simulation will enable V3 maturity and the safety assessment for the three EAP solutions to be completed by the end of Wave 2. EAP will increase efficiency of TMA operations which will lead to an increase in runway throughput so providing economic benefits in Europe. There are also potential environmental benefits to be gained without safety and performance being compromised.

Expansion of the S-PWS arrivals and departure matrix plus completion of the safety case to support regulation will both help to facilitate deployment in more European airports, and result in improved efficiency and runway throughput gains in those airports that are capacity constrained.

The feasibility of dynamic pairwise separation minima (wake and runway occupancy time) and enhanced optimised separation delivery for arrivals and departures based on advanced technology and BD/ML techniques plus delegation of separation to flight crew will be validated at the V2 level of maturity. Reliable predictive machine learning models will be developed and validated and the requirements of advanced technological solutions will be defined. Data collection campaigns to support the development and verification of ML models and technological requirements will be conducted at three major European airports. V2 validation exercises will be conducted to validate the feasibility and performance benefits of the different ground based and airborne solutions in terms of operational and flight/time efficiency, runway throughput capacity, and predictability, while ensuring safety is maintained. The conducted validation techniques will depend on the solution and will include analytical techniques, expert judgement, fast-time simulation, back-to-back and real-time simulation and shadow mode trials. 

Real-time simulations and live trials will be conducted to validate at the V3 level the operational feasibility and acceptability as well as the safety benefits of the ground based solutions ‘Improved Capacity and Safety of Runway Operations at Secondary Airports in Low Visibility Conditions’ and ‘Improved Approach Procedures into Secondary Airports in Low Visibility Conditions’. Fast-time simulations will be used to complement these validation exercises and to develop the V3 cost-benefit analysis.

From an airborne perspective, a real-time simulation complemented by expert judgement validation activities, a shadow mode live trial and fast-time simulations will be used to validate at V2 to operational and technical feasibility of Enhanced Flight Vision System and Synthetic Vision Guidance System, Combined Vision System and LPV-100 capability will enable approach and landing in low visibility conditions.

A number of real-time simulations and shadow mode live trials will be conducted to validate at the V3 level, the operational feasibility and acceptability, as well as the proposed benefits in terms of predictability and safety, of the prototype tools and procedures associated with the six solutions relating to “Digital evolution of integrated surface management”.

For the ground based solution ‘enhanced Runway Condition Awareness for Runway Excursion Prevention’ solution, the operational feasibility and acceptability and proposed safety benefits of the ATC support tool prototypes will be validated at the V3 level based on evidence from real-time simulations. The air-borne solution ‘Support Tools for pilots for better prevention of Runway Excursions and monitoring of A/C trajectory’ targets V1 maturity for Take-Off Monitoring System, OBACS-ROAAS feedback loop and AirCraft Trajectory Monitoring System.

Our role

EUROCONTROL is leading the project as well as the Work Package 4 and 10 solutions within this package, and we are also contributing to WP3.

Partners

EUROCONTROL, AIRBUS, PANSA, LFV/COOPANS, DASSAULT, DFS, ENAIRE, ENAV, HungaroControl, Honeywell, INDRA, Leonardo, SINTEF, NATS, Avinor (SEAC2020), HAL, Swedavia (SEAC2020), THALES LAS, THALES AVS