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Cross Border SESAR Trials for Enhanced Arrival Management

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - PJ25 XSTREAM (Cross Border SESAR Trials for Enhanced Arrival Management)

Reporting period: 2019-01-01 to 2019-12-31

In major hub airports, during peak hours, variation in aircraft arrival times exceeds the capacity of the destination airport to handle them without incurring airborne delay. These delays can be computed through Arrival Management systems (AMAN), that take into consideration runway capacities, aircraft characteristics and separation standards to compute an arrival sequence. However, in today’s operation, the arrival management strategy is decided and implemented at a late stage of the flight since most of AMANs have limited horizon, capability and accuracy. Because of this late implementation, the tendency is to absorb those delays at low levels in the TMA with holding and/or vectoring, generating high workload for Air Traffic Control Operators (ATCO), extra costs for airlines and poor environmental efficiency.

For those major airports, another area of interest is the optimisation of Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management constraints (ATFCM), with the use of locally computed pre-departure Target Time of Arrival (TTA). Also, even without capacity constraints, arrival streaming can be efficient for airport curfew management, as for example to avoid holdings or vectoring before the opening of the airport. The integration of the Airspace Users into the loop is essential as a few minutes gained on a flight can be sufficient to ensure connection for dozens of passengers, or avoid diversion because of a curfew at the destination airport. Combined with pre-departure TTAs, the development of collaborative processes with Airspace Users, ANSPs and Network Manager brings efficiency gains and arrival flexibility to improve arrival management process performance.

To address these challenges, the xStream project has demonstrated, at a very large-scale, new extended arrival management tools and techniques that improve flight efficiency and flight predictability at airports, in TMA, Extended TMA, and in en-route UAC / ACC. This includes the following solutions:
- Extended AMAN between 200 to 350 NM: the main target of xStream is to provide a ready-for-implementation solution for PCP deployment, with an extended arrival management horizon up to at least 200 NM in order to enable delay absorption earlier in the flight and at higher altitude, which is more fuel-efficient. When dealing with high levels of arrival delay, or for pre-sequencing the aircrafts before a detected congestion at the entry of the Extended TMA, this horizon can be extended up to 350 NM for maximum efficiency. Also, the concept of target times for airborne long haul flights was applied with a horizon outside of the European Network involving the AU’s OCCs in the process.
- Handling of multiple inbound flows to multiple airports in the sectors of upstream ACCs: with the extension of AMAN horizon, the cumulative effect of E-AMAN requests in the same sector may lead to an increase of ATCO workload, because of the competition between the flows, and induced conflicts. To prevent this, a CDM process has to be implemented to better coordinate E-AMAN activities, and assess upstream ACCs ability to deliver the E-AMAN service.
- Improvement of Arrival Planning: by using locally computed Pre-departure Target Time of Arrival sent to Network Manager in addition with a collaborative process to integrate Airspace Users’ preferences/priorities, the impact and cost of ATFCM delays can be reduced. TTA allocation also contributes to the arrival management process by enhancing the short-haul adherence to the targeted sequence.
- Integration of Airspace Users Preferences in the arrival planning process, thus limiting the cost of delay for airlines. UDPP and A-FLEX provide an efficient solution to reallocate ATFCM delay in order to optimize arrivals according to Airspace User needs, reducing the impact on Airline operations.

The project involved the largest number of upstream ACCs (actually most of ACCs of the Core Area) around those platforms, and Airspace Users in order to implement collaborative processes for the management of arrival sequence (A-Flex).
As part of the SESAR 2020 programme, the demonstrations contribute to SESAR CONOPS definition and engineering standardization work concerning the benefits brought by Extended Arrival Management (E-AMAN).
As the last reporting period, all the work was carried including trial definition, trial execution, and demonstration report.

London trials :
- Gatwick : deployement of an integrated AMAN-DMAN HMI and Extended AMAN trial up to 350 NM.
- Heathrow : shadow mode trial including elements of partners trajectory prediction sharing with AMAN.

Paris trials : three exercises were already conducted.
- Paris Orly Extended AMAN : evaluated during summer 2017, then in November 2018, to assess benefits for the management of LVP procedures.
- COP Sequencer : multiple trials between March 2018 and June 2019, with participation of Milan, Zurich, Geneva, Reims, Maastricht and Karlsruhe UACs.
- Improved Arrival planning : multiple trials on CDG and Orly arrival peaks, including the integration of Airspace users preferences.

Zurich trials :
- Arrival planning management & NM integration exercise completed in 2018, with trials between September and October.
- Collaborative tool between Airspace Users, ATC and NM : Shadow mode trials in 2019.
- Extended Arrival Management : trialed in september 2019, with an E-AMAN prototype.

Integrating multiple AMAN in UAC :
- Frankfurt Early Morining Arrival Stream Optimisation trial
- Shadow-mode trial on multiple E-AMAN operation in multiple ACC/UAC

Also, transversal activities were performed, in order to consolidate a common performance approach, and provide the final demonstration report, compiling the results of all trials.

Results were presented during a SESAR Network Closure Event at Eurocontrol in November 2019. Also, a communication brochure was produced to summarize all the concepts trialed within the project, and distributed to SESAR Community.

The project is the winner of ATM awards in the category Environment, recognized by a panel of senior, worldwide experts.
"The project brought the following operational benefits

Environment:
- Reduction of airborne holding in low airspace
- Fuel savings in the arrival phase, up to 30 kg of fuel per flight
- Reduction of gas emissions up to 90 kg of CO2 per flight

Capacity:
- Reduction of congestion and complexity in TMA, enabling capacity improvements in terminal area during traffic peaks.
- Optimisation of ATFCM constraints, by better matching available capacity with traffic demand.
- Arrival ATFCM delays reduced up to 5%

Flexibility:
- Ability to integrate Airspace Users priorities thus reducing the cost of ATFCM delay for airlines.
- Through UDPP, ability to reallocate ATFCM delay in order to optimize arrivals according to Airspace User needs, reducing the impact on Airline operations.

Theses demonstrations were a step beyond “Industrial Research” and prepare operational use, resolving potential operational issues raised by previous projects. They served as proof of concept for AF#1 in Pilot Common Project (PCP), which requires that 24 European airports operate extended arrival management procedures by 1st January 2024. Results show that operational benefits are reached, and solutions are ready for implementation."
Summary of xStream concepts