The 5th Dimension in Conflict Management – XYZT+Capability

Kurzfassung

4D-Trajectory-Based Operations promise improved efficiency, safety benefits, and high predictability. However, having in mind today’s heterogeneous traffic equipage, handling every aircraft identically seems unreasonable and inefficient. Aircraft with powerful anti-icing equipage are less sensitive against icing conditions than aircraft without anti-icing. Aircraft being capable of forecasting touchdown times with high accuracy can be handled more efficiently by arrival managers than poorer equipped aircraft. The risk potential of flying through ash clouds may even depend on current engine temperature. This paper presents a new way of handling conditional no-fly zones (NFZ) that depend on aircraft’s performance, equipage or capabilities. An already existing N-dimensional conflict detection and resolution framework usually handles separation violations in 4 dimensions, covering latitude, longitude, altitude and time. Conflicts are handled for all aircraft/aircraft and aircraft/NFZ combinations. This system is extended by (at least) one dimension allowing to model above described conditional NFZs. As for the other 4 dimensions, a distance metric is introduced for the capability dimension yielding a conflict if the aircraft/NFZ combination is not allowed in the given situation.