Supporting Air Traffic Controllers in handling sector specific tasks, enabled by the use of the Boundary Arrival Task Manager

Abstract

o support ATCOs situational awareness when handling any ‘unfamiliar’ sector, an advisory tool called Boundary Arrival Task Manager (BATMAN) was developed. This supporting system provides direct handling advisories regarding a specific flight to the controller. Provided advisories allow ATCO to react faster, and increase s/he self-confidence. In addition, this tool would allow to automate some tasks to further reduce the workload of an ATCO. This paper provides a description of the BATMAN tool and the idea behind its development. Besides, it briefly describes the simulation trials setup performed to test and evaluate this tool. Collected qualitative results are then analyzed. Qualitative assessment is based on gathered ATCOs feedback on their subjective feeling, tool’s operational feasibility, and possible further features enhancement. Lastly, this paper presents other possible uses of this tool beyond the current works and activities.