Airspace User support to the development of Network Collaborative Management

Project Information

Airline Team NCM

Grant agreement ID: 783117

DOI 10.3030/783117

Closed project

EC signature date 19 April 2018

Start date 1 February 2018

End date 31 January 2020

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost € 2 869 500,00

EU contribution € 2 008 650,00

Coordinated by

DEUTSCHE LUFTHANSA AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Airline Team NCM (Airspace User support to the development of Network Collaborative Management)

Reporting period: 2019-02-01 to 2020-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Unfortunately, thescenario of missed flights due to ATM delay is very common, especially as air traffic is growing rapidly every year. To minimize the negative effects on travelers as well as on the economy, environment and the general public, the project NCM, including five major European airlines, air navigation service providers, the Network Manager and airports, was set up under the umbrella of the European Commission.

The project aims to demonstrate performance improvements to all actors by identifying and applying smarter, more synchronized measures and closer cooperation throughout the European ATM Network

The airspace over Europe is limited. With increasing air traffic,
limits create delays if the full airspace and airport capacity is not used wisely and in a coordinated manner. Today, mainly because there are many actors (airports, Area Control Centres [ACC]) in the network that are not connected, this leads to numerous local measures to balance demand and capacity. These measures are optimal from a local point of view, but might worsen the perfor-mance of the overall network. Consequently, many flights are affected by various restrictions that may result in delays.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Working together in the European network requires intensive day-to-day planning and operational coordination. The NCM demonstrations ultimately aim to improve coordination between partners so that better flow and flight measures are agreed amongst all relevant operational actors. Some exercises focus on bilateral coordi-nation improvements; others focus on improvements in connecting with the network. All will contribute to faster, more efficient communication, information sharing and cooperation between stake-holders, resulting in more predictability, higher efficiency and less delays.

Faster and more structured coordination using support tools will allow for more dynamicity and the fine-tuning of pro- posed measures compared to traditional coordination means such as telephone and email coordination. This also allows for the implementation of additional surgical measures to individual flights. In addition, it will allow for much better control of situations where deviations to the original plan are required, e.g. in case of weather disturbances.

Five major European airlines – Lufthansa Group Airlines, Air France including Hop! And Transavia France, Ryanair, British Airways, EasyJet – covering 80% of Euro-pean air traffic, formed the ATEAM (Airline Team for the Enhancement of Air Traffic Management) consortium to contribute to SESAR activities such as the NCM project. Lead by Lufthansa, the airlines have worked closely with all PJ24 Project members to Show Benefits in a wide Variety of demonstrations.
Over 6000 Flights have participated, spread over 5 different Exercises. Also shadow mode Trials have been conducted where live Trials wouldn`t be feasible. All this was supported by extensive Simulations and Evaluations to underline the benefits and create concepts that are safe, efficient and can mutually be used across the INDUSTRY.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

AVOIDING REGULATIONS WITH COORDINATED RE-ROUTES

DSNA developed the Collaborate Advanced Planning tool (CAP), used to coordinate options to avoid busy French sectors, in direct coordination with airlines. In NCM, DSNA has demomstrated the benefits of CAP coordination and measures to airlines by extending the use of the CAP tool to cross-border operations and other ANSPs, such as DFS in their busy Karlsruhe sectors. DSNA supports the connection of CAP with the Network Manager’s systems to provide transparency and improvement of CAP measures to operational actors and airlines. A wide range of flight trials (CAP) as well as shadow mode trials (NCAP) with live data and simulations were successfully performed.

OPTIMIZATION OF ATFCM MEASURES WORKFLOW

ENAIRE demonstrated that the support of their new tool iACM will contribute to efficient identification and implementation of ATFCM measures. ENAIRE tested a number of coordinated ATFCM measures in the NCM demonstrations such as:
Ground delay measures for flows, flights and City pairs
Cross-border level capping measures in coordination with France using the CAP tool
Targeted flow measures using the PLANTA tool, developed by Eurocontrol
The results of the demonstrations will contribute to the further implementation of iACM

RRP

Aircraft operators in the European network deal with 68 control centres in 43 countries that all aim to balance demand and capacity in their area. Local tools to reduce delays will be connected to the network systems to ensure local measures are validated against the European operational environment and then shared amongst all partners. Karlsruhe UAC aims to connect local re-route proposals (RRP) to solve their capacity problems and provide transparency to the network and airspace users. As a result, Karlsruhe can check measures against network constraints and airspace users will receive fully validated RRPs via the network system. This allows airlines to plan better, optimize their flights, and reduce the impact of capacity constraints.


USING AVAILABLE CAPACITY
THROUGH FINETUNED AND TARGETED FLIGHT/FLOW ADJUSTMENTS

Coordination between network and local tactical capacity managers currently takes place through ad-hoc and inefficient telephone communication. Linking local support tools with network tools via B2B messages will enable standardized, time-efficient and dynamic coordination processes. This will provide the possibility to test and coordinate targeted flight and flow measures that create less disturbance to traffic and have less or even no impact on certain flights. (MUAC) simulates the impact and coordinates proposed measures with the network using B2B connection before applying them. This enables a wider appli-cation of targeted flight mea-sures such as delay exclusions and improvements. In addition, air-space users are in close coordination with MUAC and NMOC to optimize the allocation of targeted measures to flights that are critical in respect to night curfew, passenger connections or crew duty times.

EXPECTED RESULTS

NCM demonstrations have shown to improve the connectivity between operational stakeholders by sharing operational information and by using improved coordination processes. Supported by local tools that are connected with network tools, it was shown that this will result in significant time savings and will create more time to find fine-tuned and targeted measures for specific flights or flows. These smarter measures are expected to facilitate better use of available or unused capacities and therefore contribute to reducing the impact of ATFM measures on airlines and their passengers. All that said, especially the AU`s want These concepts to be further developed and implemented taking into account that a lot aof the Manual work done during the Trials must be automated in the future. This requires a close development of B2B interfaces/data Exchange and standardised concepts amongst all Stakeholders (NM/ANSP`s/Airports/AU`s).

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