4D Trajectory Negotiation to Achieve Situational and Operational Awareness for Air Traffic Management

In order to improve safety, operational economics, and environmental sustainability, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has established a collaborative environment that promotes the sharing of comprehensive information, not only between ground-to-ground systems but also between aircrafts and corresponding air traffic management systems. However, the existing Air Traffic Control (ATC) system heavily relies on voice communication, which is difficult to satisfy the demands of Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) by effectively coordinating the 4-Dimensional Trajectory (4DT) across various systems and stakeholders. This paper identifies the concept of connected aircraft, outlines potential implementation challenges, and explores additional functional capabilities that could enhance situational and operational awareness. Moreover, based on the live flight experiment, the validation of coordination method and information exchange between the aircraft and ground systems by using proposed system architecture and IP data link service are presented. Finally, we discuss the challenges and issues that need to be addressed for establishing a collaborative operational environment to realize 4DT negotiation through a system-wide information management environment.