Flow-Centric Air Traffic Control: Human in the Loop Simulation Experiment

Flow-Centric is a novel air traffic control concept for the management of en-route airspace in which controller assignment is determined by grouping factors such as similarity in trajectory rather than by the physical position of the flight (by area sectors). Through the conduct of Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) simulation involving a total of 6 air traffic control officers (ATCOs) from Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, across a 11-day period, qualitative feedback was solicited from the ATCOs. Key takeaways include: the need to understand further into the difficulty level of different crpssing and merging and not simply have a uniform perceived difficulty or weight for such scenarios, the importance of considering the difficulty/complexity factor rather than the volume of traffic when dealing with assignment strategy and the importance of considering human-machine interfaces dealing with zoom level or secondary windows.