Delays in the Flow of Air Traffic

1948 ◽  
Vol 52 (448) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. Bowen ◽  
T. Pearcey

It is becoming recognised that before civil aircraft can operate at high density, the most important problem to be solved is that of traffic control. Methods exist by which a single aircraft can navigate from a distant point to an airport and let down to a safe landing under bad weather conditions. Difficulties arise when several aircraft are involved at once and long delays can occur in the neighbourhood of airports carrying high density traffic. In this paper an analysis is made of the traffic problem in an attempt to clarify some of the factors involved.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383
Author(s):  
Judith Rosenow ◽  
Martin Lindner ◽  
Joachim Scheiderer

The implementation of Trajectory-Based Operations, invented by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research program SESAR, enables airlines to fly along optimized waypoint-less trajectories and accordingly to significantly increase the sustainability of the air transport system in a business with increasing environmental awareness. However, unsteady weather conditions and uncertain weather forecasts might induce the necessity to re-optimize the trajectory during the flight. By considering a re-optimization of the trajectory during the flight they further support air traffic control towards achieving precise air traffic flow management and, in consequence, an increase in airspace and airport capacity. However, the re-optimization leads to an increase in the operator and controller’s task loads which must be balanced with the benefit of the re-optimization. From this follows that operators need a decision support under which circumstances and how often a trajectory re-optimization should be carried out. Local numerical weather service providers issue hourly weather forecasts for the coming hour. Such weather data sets covering three months were used to re-optimize a daily A320 flight from Seattle to New York every hour and to calculate the effects of this re-optimization on fuel consumption and deviation from the filed path. Therefore, a simulation-based trajectory optimization tool was used. Fuel savings between 0.5% and 7% per flight were achieved despite minor differences in wind speed between two consecutive weather forecasts in the order of 0.5 m s−1. The calculated lateral deviations from the filed path within 1 nautical mile were always very small. Thus, the method could be easily implemented in current flight operations. The developed performance indicators could help operators to evaluate the re-optimization and to initiate its activation as a new flight plan accordingly.


Author(s):  
T.M. Moles

Hong Kong is situated at the center of the air traffic axis for Asia, and has, at Kai Tak, one of the busiest airports in the world. The areahas experienced a ten-fold increase in population over 25 years and now has the highest urban density in Asia. Hong Kong is in the monsoon belt and is subjected to the very severe weather conditions of typhoons.Kai Tak airport is unique. The main 7,000 foot runway is substantially reclaimed from the harbor which in turn lies within a spectacular mountain bowl. The 310° flight path traverses the north end of the Kowloon peninsula with equally spectacular urban development.Overall disaster contingency planning within this broad spectrum is the responsibility of a joint Police/Military Command. An Aircraft Accident Committee coordinates joint emergency service planning, command and communications training and exercises.Response to an aircraft disaster is initated by Air Traffic Control through the joint Fire Service/Police/Military Command which sets up a discretionary response for intervention, search and rescue by land, sea and air.Although the problems are universal, the Maximum Credible Incident scale is extraordinary to Hong Kong. Unique means of dealing with this problem have been specially evolved here, particularly in the field of fire fighting and marine rescue which involve a Catamaran Rescue and Immediate Care Vessel.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nastaran Yaghoobi Ershadi ◽  
José Manuel Menéndez

Traffic surveillance systems are interesting to many researchers to improve the traffic control and reduce the risk caused by accidents. In this area, many published works are only concerned about vehicle detection in normal conditions. The camera may vibrate due to wind or bridge movement. Detection and tracking of vehicles are a very difficult task when we have bad weather conditions in winter (snowy, rainy, windy, etc.) or dusty weather in arid and semiarid regions or at night, among others. In this paper, we proposed a method to track and count vehicles in dusty weather with a vibrating camera. For this purpose, we used a background subtraction based strategy mixed with extra processing to segment vehicles. In this paper, the extra processing included the analysis of the headlight size, location, and area. In our work, tracking was done between consecutive frames via a particle filter to detect the vehicle and pair the headlights using the connected component analysis. So, vehicle counting was performed based on the pairing result. Our proposed method was tested on several video surveillance records in different conditions such as in dusty or foggy weather, with a vibrating camera, and on roads with medium-level traffic volumes. The results showed that the proposed method performed better than other previously published methods, including the Kalman filter or Gaussian model, in different traffic conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5576
Author(s):  
Mohamed Ali Kammoun ◽  
Sadok Turki ◽  
Nidhal Rezg

The flight rescheduling problem is one of the major challenges of air traffic issue. Unforeseen bad weather conditions stimulate air traffic congestion and make the initial scheduling infeasible, resulting in significant economic losses for passengers and airlines. Furthermore, due to rigorous environmental legislations, flight rescheduling becomes a more complicated problem, as it has to deal with flight delays on the one hand, and carbon emissions on the other hand. In this paper, we address the flight rescheduling problem with an environmental requirement subject to the air capacity limitation due to bad weather conditions. A new strategy is proposed to minimize the disruption effects on planned flights, which adopted ground delay, longer route change, flight cancellation, as well speed adjustment to arrive at a scheduled time. Firstly, the objective of this study is to determine the economical flights plan in line with the new available air capacity. Secondly, by considering the environmental impact of the kerosene consumption, we illustrate the contribution of an economical decision to aircraft emissions. Experiment results are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed strategies and genetic algorithm as the used optimization method. Furthermore, the impacts of carbon tax and cost of arrival delay on the flights carbon emissions are studied.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1386
Author(s):  
Feng Liu ◽  
Shuling Dai ◽  
Yongjia Zhao

Autopilot technology in the field of aviation has developed over many years. However, it is difficult for an autopilot system to autonomously operate a civil aircraft under bad weather conditions. In this paper, we present a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm using multimodal data and preprocessing data to have a civil aircraft take off autonomously under crosswind conditions. The multimodal data include the common flight status and visual information. The preprocessing is a new design that maps some flight data by nonlinear functions based on the general flight dynamics before these data are fed into the RL model. Extensive experiments under different crosswind conditions with a professional flight simulator demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively control a civil aircraft to take off under various crosswind conditions and achieve better performance than trials without visual information or preprocessing data.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Ahlstrom

The objective of this study was to examine the potential benefits for air traffic controllers from the use of automated weather advisories. In a part-task simulation, we used a weather support tool called Automatic Identification of Risky Weather Objects in Line of Flight (AIRWOLF) that (a) detects conflicts between aircraft and hazardous weather, (b) alerts the controller, and (c) generates automatic weather advisories. During the simulation, air traffic control (ATC) subject matter experts responded to AIRWOLF alerts and either provided weather advisories to pilots via radio in two main conditions or provided data link communication in a third control condition. Automated advisories (a) eliminate the need for a manual production of weather advisories; (b) reduce the production time, voice duration, and overall advisory duration; and (c) reduce the cognitive workload associated with the dissemination of weather advisories. The results showed that the AIRWOLF tool could support air traffic controller weather avoidance actions and provide accurate and timely weather advisories to pilots. The weather advisory tool could support en route controllers for the safe, efficient, and strategic efforts required to handle adverse weather conditions in the en route environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1443
Author(s):  
Rafaela Rigaud Peixoto ◽  
Patrícia Tosqui-Lucks

Abstract: Weather events affect air traffic control (ATC) in many ways, for there are many situations that need to be reported in pilot-controller communication. This paper attempts to analyze the language used to express the impact of meteorological phenomena to air traffic operations, particularly in regard to aeronautical English, that is, the communication used during radiotelephony by air traffic controllers in training situations. For that, two types of analyses will be carried out: one regarding the formulaic structure of lexical units using 11 Aeronautical Meteorology terms within the ATC context (phase 1); and another one concerning the use of these terms by students in three ATC courses (for TWR, ACC and APP facilities) and how it affects their performance during communication activities in a learning environment (phase 2). These analyses will be based on rationales of lexical semantics for terminology; corpus linguistics (CL), comprising English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and learner corpora; and considerations about vocabulary assessment on aeronautical English exams. Results suggest that terminological patterns discussed in this paper show how meaning is dependent on context, and how lexical semantic analysis of terms may contribute to reveal nuances of language used in a specialized context. In this way, it indicates courses have been efficient in teaching and practicing the use of the main meteorological terms related to aeronautical English and that, despite some mistakes students make, evidence points out that they are able to report weather conditions to pilots and to understand pilots’ requests in a proficient level concerning vocabulary.Keywords: meteorology; aeronautical English; terminology; learner corpus; language assessment.Resumo: Eventos meteorológicos afetam o controle de tráfego aéreo (ATC) de diversas formas, dado que muitas situações precisam ser reportadas na comunicação entre piloto e controlador. Este artigo pretende analisar a linguagem utilizada para expressar o impacto de fenômenos meteorológicos para operações ATC, particularmente quanto ao uso de inglês aeronáutico, ou seja, a comunicação utilizada durante a radiotelefonia, por controladores em situações de aprendizagem. Para isso, duas análises foram realizadas: em relação à estrutura formulaica de unidades lexicais contendo 11 termos de Meteorologia Aeronáutica no contexto ATC (fase 1); e quanto ao uso desses termos por alunos de três cursos ATC (para os órgãos operacionais TWR, ACC e APP) e como isso afeta seu desempenho durante as atividades de comunicação em um ambiente de aprendizagem (fase 2). Essas análises serão fundamentadas nas teorias de semântica lexical para terminologia; linguística de corpus (LC), compreendendo Inglês para Fins Específicos (ESP) e corpora de aprendizes; e considerações sobre avaliação de vocabulário em exames de proficiência de inglês aeronáutico. Os resultados sugerem que os padrões terminológicos discutidos mostram como os significados dependem do contexto, e como a análise léxico-semântica de termos pode contribuir para revelar nuances da linguagem utilizada em contexto especializado. Desta forma, demonstrou-se que os cursos foram eficientes no ensino e na prática do uso dos principais termos meteorológicos e que, apesar de alguns erros cometidos, as evidências apontam que os estudantes foram capazes de reportar condições meteorológicas e compreender as solicitações dos pilotos com nível de proficiência adequado em relação a vocabulário.Palavras-chave: meteorologia; inglês aeronáutico; terminologia; corpus de aprendizes; avaliação de línguas.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 43-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. O. Nikulin

In the article the analysis of functioning a joint decision-making (A-CDM) system of Sheremetyevo Airport is presented during airport operation in a "rush hour". Domestic and international programs of air traffic management (ATM) development assume that the airports will be completely included into the air traffic management network as components of this network. Cooperative decision-making will be used to provide a "seamless" process of planning. This process will take place with participation of airspace users, suppliers of an air navigation service and airports (with use of the automated facilities of arrival, departure and traffic on airfield surface) for the benefit of sequence management to increase runway capacity. The runway equipment has to be modernized, separation standards among aircraft on arrival and departure should be reduced, modern navigation and traffic control on an airfield surface aids have to operate. The runway is referred to the resources which operate according to the principle of only one client service. Influence of weather conditions (the wet runway, severe wind, low visibility) determines the airfield capacity. Arrival and departure control allows optimizing aerodrome operation from the view of cost efficiency and ecology. The system of joint decision-making for an airport is a complex of the procedures aimed at increasing level of air traffic flows organization, airfield and airspace capacity through raising a level of event predictability and optimization of the resource use process. The system allows operating information to obtain the modified output data for decision-making. The main system objectives are to increase the level of temporary accuracy of an event emergence and also its predictability.


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