As the world emerges from a pandemic, most analysts see traffic returning to 2019 levels by 2024/2025, according to the International Air Transport Association. The aviation community remains focused on handling new levels of demand for airspaces and airports, while delivering new efficiencies and innovations to increase resiliency to handle future global fluctuations.
As cited by the International Civil Aviation Organization, 184 countries have signed on to adopt a goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. A major contributor towards meeting this target is increased efficiency of flights through modern air traffic management technology. As ANSPs invest resources and focus on achieving these new savings, the industry is awash with studies, working groups, and proof-of-concepts to explore how technology can deliver on the promise of Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO). TBO manages the trajectory of a manned or unmanned vehicle during all phases of flight, with other trajectories and constraints, to achieve optimum system performance while considering user preferences.
The path to TBO faces headwinds from proprietary systems, a lack of fielded system capability, and uncooperative operational paradigms. Leidos Transportation Solutions and the Skyline-X platform can provide proven solutions and experience to address these challenges.
Standard interfaces & open systems
A key part of TBO is the processing and exchange of flight trajectories. This becomes critical for international flights, which depend on more than one ANSP to process each respective portion of the flight. TBO becomes transformative when adjoining ANSPs share details of flights, including ideal 4-dimensional trajectories to enable cooperation and tactical agreements. Supporters of TBO look for predictability, fuel savings, and reduced controller interaction, especially in terminal areas.
Proprietary offerings in the market today have struggled with an open exchange of flight data in a way that requires a specific vendor’s product on each side of the interface. Furthermore, the ability to change flight data processing to handle ANSP-specific requirements is cost-prohibitive.
Leidos’ SkyLine-X solution will soon have the capability to address these barriers by ensuring that the exchange of flight and flow data can be done using the ICAO exchange standard, known as the Flight Information Exchange Model (FIXM). This will allow for alignment with Flight & Flow Information for a Collaborative Environment (FF-ICE) concept.
Furthermore, Skyline-X can be easily modified to support ANSP-specific operations to make strategic steps towards TBO. Most importantly, Leidos understands the long lifecycle of ATM systems and therefore supports flight and flow exchange with any standard-compliant ATM solution.
Unmatched traffic flow solutions
Since 2010, Leidos has developed and enhanced the Time Based Flow Management (TBFM) system for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). TBFM uses
time-based metering to sequence and achieve optimal spacing for aircraft approaching busy terminal airspace. TBFM also performs similar processing for departure aircraft to provide an integrated, efficient, and up-to-date route of flight, all while improving tactical departure and arrival solutions.
TBFM is now operational across the USA’s most complex metroplexes and delivers significant efficiencies. As the FAA TBO Analytics Tool showed during one month in 2022, Denver International Airport saw an average reduction of 2.9% of flying time per flight for arrivals – saving approximately 69 hours of fuel burn just within the terminal area alone.
As traffic returns to new record levels and TBFM continues to be deployed, these savings will continue to increase.
Skyline-X, which now combines TBFM and its ability to enforce constraints of agreed trajectories with an FAA-proven trajectory model, allows aviation stakeholders to realize TBO-based efficiencies in their operations. International customers now can benefit from FAA solutions developed, tested, and operated by Leidos for over 10 years.
The use of cooperative ATC operational approaches
With technologies to improve trajectories and information dominating the air traffic landscape, additional attention is required to achieve the operational results that truly deliver TBO.
In the scope of achieving TBO internationally, savings are only realized when air traffic controller user communities are part of the solution. Without user buy-in, the essential instructions to improve a flight’s trajectory cannot happen.
There exists an element of reciprocity for flights across a mutual national border. For example, an ANSP can share more flow and flight information in exchange for improved metering instructions to incoming aircraft from other ANSPs. On both sides, workloads decline for controllers and airlines save fuel.
Airspace configurations, resource constraints, and geopolitical forces can create resistance to TBO-related changes. Leidos has experience finding solutions that can lead to greater efficiencies. Skyline-X does this through a flexible design, catering to different operational models and ensuring cooperative approaches can be achieved.