Safe under any Circumstances? Validation of Air Traffic Controllers working Unfamiliar Sectors

Kurzfassung

Air traffic management (ATM) faces growing demand, mitigating climate impact, adverse weather, and air traffic controller (ATCO) shortages. The Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) programme addresses these through research projects like IFAV3, which investigates whether ATCOs can safely manage sectors for which they lack formal unit endorsement, given specified preconditions. This study presents safety results from a validation exercise evaluating operational feasibility when ATCOs manage sectors outside their standard endorsement portfolio, provided they possess comparable experience in similar endorsed sectors. The objective was to determine whether ATCOs in non-endorsed sectors sustain SESAR safety standards derived from Accident-Incident-Models. We applied the SESAR safety assessment methodology defined in SESAR’s Extended Safety Reference E-SRM. Average actual and four-minute predicted losses of separation did not significantly differ between reference and solution scenarios. Only three runs involved separation infringements; none were ATCO-induced or showed significant ATCO contributory factors. All success criteria met targets. While ATCOs noted ATM service quality could potentially be affected, they confirmed operational safety remained unimpaired, despite indicating few more subjective safety issues due to comprehensive consideration of potential situations. The study confirms the novel deployment concept maintains safety levels even for ATCOs without full unit endorsement, validating flexible sector staffing approaches. This IFAV3 validation provides empirical evidence that ATCOs can safely extend their operational scope beyond traditional unit endorsements.