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A Vision and Roadmap for Increasing User Autonomy in Flight Operations in the National AirspaceThe purpose of Air Transportation is to move people and cargo safely, efficiently and swiftly to their destinations. The companies and individuals who use aircraft for this purpose, the airspace users, desire to operate their aircraft according to a dynamically optimized business trajectory for their specific mission and operational business model. In current operations, the dynamic optimization of business trajectories is limited by constraints built into operations in the National Airspace System (NAS) for reasons of safety and operational needs of the air navigation service providers. NASA has been developing and testing means to overcome many of these constraints and permit operations to be conducted closer to the airspace user's changing business trajectory as conditions unfold before and during the flight. A roadmap of logical steps progressing toward increased user autonomy is proposed, beginning with NASA's Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR) concept that enables flight crews to make informed, deconflicted flight-optimization requests to air traffic control. These steps include the use of data communications for route change requests and approvals, integration with time-based arrival flow management processes under development by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), increased user authority for defining and modifying downstream, strategic portions of the trajectory, and ultimately application of self-separation. This progression takes advantage of existing FAA NextGen programs and RTCA standards development, and it is designed to minimize the number of hardware upgrades required of airspace users to take advantage of these advanced capabilities to achieve dynamically optimized business trajectories in NAS operations. The roadmap is designed to provide operational benefits to first adopters so that investment decisions do not depend upon a large segment of the user community becoming equipped before benefits can be realized. The issues of equipment certification and operational approval of new procedures are addressed in a way that minimizes their impact on the transition by deferring a change in the assignment of separation responsibility until a large body of operational data is available to support the safety case for this change in the last roadmap step.This paper will relate the roadmap steps to ongoing activities to clarify the economics-based transition to these technologies for operational use.
Document ID
20160010013
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Cotton, William B. (National Inst. of Aerospace Hampton, VA, United States)
Hilb, Robert (National Inst. of Aerospace Hampton, VA, United States)
Koczo, Stefan (Rockwell Collins, Inc. Cedar Rapids, IA, United States)
Wing, David (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 3, 2016
Publication Date
June 13, 2016
Subject Category
Air Transportation And Safety
Report/Patent Number
NF1676L-22622
Meeting Information
Meeting: AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (AVIATION 2016)
Location: Washington, DC
Country: United States
Start Date: June 13, 2016
End Date: June 17, 2016
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Funding Number(s)
WBS: WBS 330693.04.30.07.05
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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