Surface Traffic Alerts Improve Runway Safety

Project Information

VLD2-W2 STAIRS

Grant agreement ID: 874476

DOI

10.3030/874476

Project closed

EC signature date 19 December 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 31 December 2022

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 5 733 459,58

EU contribution

€ 3 948 760,09

Coordinated by

HONEYWELL AEROSPACE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - VLD2-W2 STAIRS (Surface Traffic Alerts Improve Runway Safety)

Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2022-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The airport surface safety including prevention from high energy collision on the runway and runway incursions is an important concern identified by aviation authorities worldwide without any significant improvement over the last decades. Runway incursions still endanger lives and incur high costs every year for the aviation industry. SESAR 2020 studies showed that most runway incursions could have been prevented - lives could have been saved, aircraft damages and closed runways avoided. The solution lies in SESAR technologies that have now reached maturity level V3 and require demonstration and validation in a real environment. Since the worst runway collision accident in 1977 (Tenerife) many improvements have already been made on the ATC side, but no specific avionics safety system has been implemented to help prevent such high fatality risks.
The primary goal of this Project was to bring the Solution developed in previous SESAR Waves to the demonstration phase and significantly reduce the operational and business risks before deployment. The demonstration was supposed to target a very large number of commercial flights on many high, medium and low-density airports to demonstrate the system performance, but couldn’t be fully performed due to the Covid crisis. Despite modification of the initial assumption, Project allowed to significantly expose the solutions and make the next step towards even safer aviation.

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

The SESAR PJ03B-05 Solution has been developed within the SESAR Airport Safety Net technology addressing two architectures for mainline (SURF-A) and SURF-ITA (business aircraft) as an onboard safety solution for pilots to prevent runways collisions. These functions were evaluated under 4 main objectives OB1 through OB4 including controlled entry into service with required system performance supported by in-service data fast time simulations, addressing qualitative assessments of ADS-B and interoperability with existing ATC architecture.
Activities done under this project included all aspects of demonstration with fast time simulations, flight trial, ADS-B in-service significant data replay and bench test and provided outcomes to all defined objectives covering all applicable success criteria for planned certification and deployment. An important outcome from qualitative assessment with all parameters helped to improve design solutions to secure demanding safety objectives with ADS-B airport environment and future standardization. Using different regional ADS-B data compared to previous EU data collections under SESAR PJ28 helped with system adjustment unified with global ATC procedures and controlled airspace differences. Analyzing millions of operations provided highly confident results proving system performance and helped to assess that there is no impact to existing ATC procedures in global. In addition, an ATC operational workshop with key airspace stakeholders was conducted to ensure alignment on the overall ATM environment.

The final demonstration was executed using Airbus and Honeywell fleets. Both solutions under two project exercises demonstrated readiness for deployment with anticipated technical, certification, operational and business risks following all demonstration objectives. The system demonstration proved expected system performance to improve safety for all objectives and Airspace User stakeholders using large scale in-service data and flight campaign in operational environment with interoperability aspects.
It is anticipated that activities performed under the project have been a significant input to consider the function as ready to be deployed and certified for planned mainline and business aircraft platforms with agreed deployment strategy and entry into service plans. Due to several program impact factors, some of the initially planned activities will be continued beyond the SESAR STAIRS project.

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)

Results of the STAIRS project will contribute to achieving the expected level of safety during runway operations and also supporting airport traffic capacity and thus the ATM network’s overall performance.
The runway safety improvement will ultimately reduce the number of incidents/accidents impacting safety of passengers and crews, costs of damage to aircraft and negative revenue impact on the aircraft and airport operators.
Implementation of runway safety nets is expected to reinforce the confidence that EU citizens have in aviation. Runway accidents or near-miss collisions are highly broadcasted events, in traditional media as well as social networks.
Preventing accidents is the main purpose of Air Traffic Control and pilots, and any failure resulting in accidents will have social impact on the travelling public and, consequently, a negative economic impact on the industry. SURF-A and SURF-ITA functions developed under SESAR PJ03B-05 solution with SESAR PJ28 validation and SESAR STAIRS demonstration might help to avoid these negative impacts.

STAIRS project logo