EUROCONTROL Air Transport Innovation Network

This is one of the first projects that are part of our Air Transport Innovation Network to hand out the prototype for industrialisation. Its objective is to improve the information exchanged between different operational partners – airports, airlines, ground handlers and the EUROCONTROL Network Manager. The project is addressing challenges such as multiple point-to-point data interfaces between airlines, airports and ground handlers; airport to airport data exchange; security aspects regarding the exchanged data, etc. The project team has built a data exchange platform covering flight related data relevant to planning and operations with a standard SWIM data interface. EUROCONTROL is now making the documentation publicly available to the market, so that commercial providers can use it to further develop the platform as a product.

This process innovation project delivered a comprehensive approach to quantify the runway collision barrier model. Using the Network Manager Safety Functions Map (SAFMAP) comprehensive barrier model, the project researched and validated an approach to characterise and quantify the individual barriers success and failure rates and to integrate these into an overall risk and resilience quantitate model. The approach allows users to investigate model sensitivities to changes in the traffic conditions and to analyse the effects of addressing specific risk. A great benefit from using the approach is the ability to explicitly predict safety benefits of new investments – new infrastructure, procedures, or training.

The project objective is to visualise predicted knock-on delay and the impact on traffic demand for the next 12h from an FMP, Airport and Airline perspective.

Knock-on delays are mostly caused by aircraft rotations, i.e. a late inbound arrival of an aircraft causing a late departure on the next flight operated by the same aircraft. A smaller share of knock-on delays is caused by connecting passengers, crew, or cargo.

The project targets knock-on delays caused by the aircraft rotations and uses the calculations done by iDEMAND (based on business rules) and the RNN (Night Curfew) models to predict the impact of knock-on delays on the demand picture for FMPs, airports and airlines.

The project aims to create a real-time Decision-Making Support tool:

• For FMPs, the new interface allows to visualise the predicted demand vs. the ETFMS demand (Airspace or Traffic Volume Set) and to identify if/when knock-on delay will dissipate traffic demand peaks rendering the use of ATFM Regulations unnecessary. Or the opposite, when knock-on delays will cause traffic peaks which are not yet visible in ETFMS.
• For airports, the new interface allows to visualise the predicted arrival demand vs. the scheduled demand to identify if/when knock-on delays will shift scheduled peaks with an indication of the predicted arrival delay for each individual flight.
• For airlines, the new interface allows to visualise the predicted departure delay for each flight using a weighing indicator taking the varying degrees of importance (length of delay, aircraft type, seat capacity) into account. The interface also visualises systemic reactionary delays in the airline network caused by suboptimal flight schedules and planning, i.e. identify lack of schedule resilience.

The Flexible Use of Airspace (FUA) concept provides the European ATM system with the potential to increase the efficiency of airspace usage through enhanced civil-military cooperation. The Military Aviation Authorities’ representatives consider that, in addition to their efforts to alleviate the impact of airspace segregations on civil traffic, the Aircraft Operators (AO) could improve their taking upon the airspace usage opportunities made available throughout FUA.

Furthermore, latest performance reports show room for improvement to filing/re-filing the most horizontally efficient route plan given the state of airspace availability for the duration of the flight.

Before addressing improvement solutions, it is essential to assess in depth both FUA and non-FUA barriers to AO in better exploiting airspace availability opportunities. To that end, the factors and criteria driving AO flight planning and execution need to be captured and understood. Only the results of such an exercise could drive the identification and development of a quick-win digital solution(s) for improving CURA as sought-after by the EATIN programme.

A qualitative study report will provide conclusions and recommendations to alleviate the identified CURA barriers in areas such as procedures, system support, and civil-military cooperation.

Proposed by Vueling, the project has emerged due to the need of airspace users and airports to have a better predictability of the periods of diversion due to weather events. Nowadays, the information on the periods of diversion is very limited for the airspace users and airports, raising high uncertainty on the operations management throughout the day when the weather gets worse. Stakeholders do not have any tool to know which is the probability for a given flight to be diverted in terms of weather (METAR, TAFOR and/or WIND). It is proposed to develop and validate an AI model to predict the likelihood and trend of diversion, in order to avoid diverted flights (change scheduled flight or delay the flight), avoid undesirable delays for the next flights and avoid unexpected high workload to the Handling Services at another airport. Particpants: Vueling, Transavia, Swiss, Air Europa, Prague airport, Istanbul airport, EBAA.

Proposed by Istanbul Airport, the objective of this project is to establish a real-time communication of the delay reasons.

In 2021 the average departure delay (against the scheduled time) was 9.2mins/flight with ATFM delays contributing 0.8mins/flight. The length of delays is already shared in real-time through the EUROCONTROL MIRROR and NORTI portals but apart from ATFM delays (9% of total delay) there is no real-time sharing of the reasons for delay.

If delayed, flights are more likely to have been affected by non-ATFM delays (e.g. baggage loading, security checks, late fuelling, de-icing, etc.) with little real-time visibility to airport operators, ANSPs and the EUROCONTROL Network Manager on the reasons for these delays. Having a real-time insight into the delay reasons improves the situational awareness across the different actors and allows them to react during the operational day. The real-time sharing of the delay information in a centralised manner would allow for the tactical management of staff and resources adjusted to the actual operational situation. This allows early identification of disruptions at outstations potentially impacting the operation and at the same time centralises the collection of delay reasons to be used for post-ops performance analysis.

IATA has released a new delay code schema (AHM732) in 2022 composed of three digits representing the Turnaround Process, Reason and Stakeholder causing a delay. Sharing the IATA AHM732 Process layer information in real-time amongst operational stakeholders will provide the required insight in the delay drivers. The Process layer information does not disclose airline sensitive delay reasons or information on stakeholders.