ALBERT

Description: This document describes the STBO Client and is meant to be a quick reference guide. The STBO Client User Manual and other training materials are available for detailed user instructions.

Description: A human-in-the-loop experiment was conducted with 15 retired air traffic controllers to investigate two research questions: (a) what procedures are appropriate for the use of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) detect-and-avoid systems, and (b) how long in advance of a predicted close encounter should pilots request or execute a separation maneuver. The controller participants managed a busy Oakland air route traffic control sector with mixed commercial/general aviation and manned/UAS traffic, providing separation services, miles-in-trail restrictions and issuing traffic advisories. Controllers filled out post-scenario and post-simulation questionnaires, and metrics were collected on the acceptability of procedural options and temporal thresholds. The states of aircraft were also recorded when controllers issued traffic advisories. Subjective feedback indicated a strong preference for pilots to request maneuvers to remain well clear from intruder aircraft rather than deviate from their IFR clearance. Controllers also reported that maneuvering at 120 seconds until closest point of approach (CPA) was too early; maneuvers executed with less than 90 seconds until CPA were more acceptable. The magnitudes of the requested maneuvers were frequently judged to be too large, indicating a possible discrepancy between the quantitative UAS well clear standard and the one employed subjectively by manned pilots. The ranges between pairs of aircraft and the times to CPA at which traffic advisories were issued were used to construct empirical probability distributions of those metrics. Given these distributions, we propose that UAS pilots wait until an intruder aircraft is approximately 80 seconds to CPA or 6 nmi away before requesting a maneuver, and maneuver immediately if the intruder is within 60 seconds and 4 nmi. These thresholds should make the use of UAS detect and avoid systems compatible with current airspace procedures and controller expectations.

Description: Raytheon, in partnership with NASA, is leading the way in ensuring that the future air transportation continues to be a key driver of economic growth and stability and that this system provides an environmentally friendly, safe, and effective means of moving people and goods. A Raytheon-led team of industry and academic experts, under NASA contract NNA08BA47C, looked at the potential issues and impact of introducing four new classes of advanced aircraft into the next generation air transportation system -- known as NextGen. The study will help determine where NASA should further invest in research to support the safe introduction of these new air vehicles. Small uncrewed or unmanned aerial systems (SUAS), super heavy transports (SHT) including hybrid wing body versions (HWB), very light jets (VLJ), and supersonic business jets (SSBJ) are the four classes of aircraft that we studied. Understanding each vehicle's business purpose and strategy is critical to assessing the feasibility of new aircraft operations and their impact on NextGen's architecture. The Raytheon team used scenarios created by aviation experts that depict vehicles in year 2025 operations along with scripts or use cases to understand the issues presented by these new types of vehicles. The information was then mapped into the Joint Planning and Development Office's (JPDO s) Enterprise Architecture to show how the vehicles will fit into NextGen's Concept of Operations. The team also identified significant changes to the JPDO's Integrated Work Plan (IWP) to optimize the NextGen vision for these vehicles. Using a proven enterprise architecture approach and the JPDO s Joint Planning Environment (JPE) web site helped make the leap from architecture to planning efficient, manageable and achievable. Very Light Jets flying into busy hub airports -- Supersonic Business Jets needing to climb and descend rapidly to achieve the necessary altitude Super-heavy cargo planes requiring the shortest common flight path -- are just a few of the potential new operations in the future National Airspace System. To assess the impact of these new scenarios on overall national airspace operations, the Raytheon team used the capabilities of a suite of tools such as NASA's Airspace Concepts Evaluation System (ACES), the Flight Optimization System (FLOPS), FAA's Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT), Intelligent Automations Kinematic Trajectory Generator (KTG) and the Aviation Safety Risk Model (ASRM). Detailed metroplex modeling, surface delay models for super heavy transports, prioritized routing and corridors for supersonics business jets, and VLJ demand models are some of the models developed by the Raytheon team to study the effect of operating these new vehicles in the future NAS. Using this suite of models, several trade studies were conducted to evaluate these effects in terms of delays, equity in access, safety, and the environment. Looking at the impact of each vehicle, a number of critical issues were identified. The Raytheon team concluded that strict compliance to NextGen's 4-dimensional trajectory (4DT) management will be required to accommodate these vehicles unique operations and increased number of flights in the future air space system. The next section provides a discussion of this and the other key findings from our study.

Description: This document serves as a user manual for the STBO Client in Charlotte Douglas International Airport Air Traffic Control Tower. It describes the elements of the full interface and provides explanations for how to interact with the interface. The document also provides instructions for entering Traffic Management Initiatives, scheduling runway utilization changes, and closing runways. There are also detailed instructions for how to negotiate Approval Request (APREQ) release times using the STBO Client.

Description: This document serves as a user manual for the Observer Mode Ramp Traffic Console (RTC) in Charlotte Douglas International Airport Ramp Control Tower. It describes the elements of the full RTC interface and provides explanations for how to interact with the RTC while managing ramp traffic using one of the four RTC sector displays. The RTC provides digitally updated data for all flights including Earliest Off Block Times (EOBT) and Traffic Management Initiatives. Use of the RTC in observer mode allows only for observer and reading of data provided on RTC. In Observer Mode, the RTC may not be used to make data entries. This includes pushback, holds, and proceed inputs as well as updates to a flights data using the flight menu. However, using the RTC in Observer Mode allows for real time observation of ramp operations including pushback and hold entries made by the ramp sector controllers. The pushback advisories and Traffic Management Initiative information is also provided in Observer Mode. The RTC also provides notifications, runway departure counts and lists and near arrival flight lists as additional sources of information for management of ramp traffic. There are also detailed instructions for how to manage traffic with Surface Time Based Metering (STBM) advisories provided on RTC if in STBM mode. This document also provides instructions for use of the Ramp Manager Traffic Console (RMTC) while performing ramp manager functions such as managing the priority flight list, setting ramp status, and setting the metering mode. The RTC and RMTC ramp tool are one component of a suite of ATD-2 Tools.

Description: At many major U.S. airports, a departure approval request, or 'APREQ,' establishes a later runway departure time for a flight, allowing it to absorb tactical delay on the ground. APREQ times are traditionally coordinated by a process known as 'call-for-release' whereby an airport surface traffic manager calls an airspace traffic manager on the telephone. This research examines new electronic APREQ coordination enabled by the NASA Airspace Technology Demonstration-2 system and compares it to the call-for-release method of coordination. During the initial deployment period, electronic APREQ coordination was used for more than half of eligible flights. A majority of electronic requests were approved in less than one minute on average. Data suggest that both the average tactical delay and compliance with the electronically coordinated departure times did not differ significantly from departure times coordinated using call-for-release.

Description: NASA has been working with the FAA and aviation industry partners to develop and demonstrate new concepts and technologies that integrate arrival, departure, and surface traffic management capabilities. In March 2017, NASA conducted a human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation for integrated surface and airspace operations, modeling Charlotte Douglas International Airport, to evaluate the operational procedures and information requirements for the tactical surface metering tool, and data exchange elements between the airline controlled ramp and ATC Tower. In this paper, we focus on the calibration of the tactical surface metering tool using various metrics measured from the HITL simulation results. Key performance metrics include gate hold times from pushback advisories, taxi-in-out times, runway throughput, and departure queue size. Subjective metrics presented in this paper include workload, situational awareness, and acceptability of the metering tool and its calibration.

Description: This training material was created to train ATCT and TRACON controllers on the ATD-2 system. It includes an overview of the ATD-2 STBO Client. It discusses data exchange and integration, APREQ procedures, the web-basd DASH and the What-If system. It concludes with interactive exercises on all topics of the training course.

Description: NASA has been collaborating with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and aviation industry partners to develop and demonstrate new concepts and technologies for the Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) traffic management capabilities under the Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) project. The primary goal of the ATD-2 project is to improve the predictability and the operational efficiency of the air traffic system in metroplex environments while maintaining or improving throughput by enhancing and integrating arrival, departure and surface prediction, scheduling, and management systems. In the Phase 1 Baseline IADS Demonstration, the tactical surface scheduling capability and the user interfaces for ramp controllers and ramp traffic managers were implemented for ramp operations. The purpose of the tactical surface scheduling capability is to provide the airline ramp controller with aircraft pushback advisories that prevent surface congestion and to respond to surface and airspace constraints that become known over relatively short time horizons. For this purpose, the tactical surface metering tool first estimates the capacity of current and near-future runway resources from flight schedule and surveillance data. With demand forecasts and predicted taxi trajectories, this tool computes an efficient runway schedule of aircraft in the planning horizon based on their readiness, Earliest Off-Block Times (EOBTs), and a ration by schedule (RBS) rule. Details on the implementation of the Tactical Surface Metering tool will be provided in the full paper. Both pushback and recommended hold times advisories provided by this surface metering tool are shown on the user interfaces for the ramp controller and the ramp traffic manager, called Ramp Traffic Console (RTC) and Ramp Manager Traffic Console (RMTC), respectively. There is excess queue time in the system due to demand capacity imbalance, this time can be taken as a hold on the runway queue or at the gate and was referred to as the Metering Value. This metering value can be adjusted by the Ramp Manager in collaboration with Air Traffic Controller-Tower Traffic Management Coordinator (TMC). They selected a set of metering values as default values for the tool during human-in-the-loop simulation. As the metering value increases, there is a decrease in the gate hold and increase in the queue time at the runway. Procedures and Information needs related to managing the surface metering procedures were researched in the simulated environment. These procedures will be compared to the procedures adopted at Charlotte Douglas International Airport when the tools were deployed and adopted in November 2017 for one departure push bank per day. Feedback regarding initial issues, information needs such as the need to see EOBTs on the flight data tags and how they compare to scheduled times will also be discussed in the full paper. Initial results will be provided regarding the choice of the metering value and how it was adjusted on a daily basis and what procedures evolved will also be presented in the paper.

Description: NASA has been working with the FAA and aviation industry partners to develop and demonstrate new concepts and technologies that integrate arrival, departure, and surface traffic management capabilities. In the fall of 2017, NASA began deployment of their technologies in a phased manner to assist with the integrated surface and airspace operations at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (Charlotte, NC). Initial technologies included a tactical surface metering tool and data exchange elements between the airline-controlled ramp and Federal Aviation Administration controlled ATC Tower. In this paper, we focus on the procedures associated with the tactical surface metering tool used in the ramp control tower. This tool was first calibrated in Human-In-the-Loop simulations and was further developed when it was used in the operational world. This paper describes the collaborative procedures that the users exercised in their respective operational worlds to enable surface metering and how several metrics were used to improve the metering algorithm.