Assessing a Radar Display Concept for Large Flight Centric ATC Airspaces

The Flight Centric Air Traffic Control (FCA) concept is a rethink of the approach to air traffic control (ATC). It strives for more efficient and sustainable air traffic control, aiming to increase air traffic control officers (ATCO) productivity (flights per ATCO hour on duty) while concurrently reducing fuel consumption and minimizing CO2 emissions. The benefits of FCA are expected to increase the larger the airspace where the concept is applied. However, the larger the FCA airspace gets, the more impractical it is to display it to the ATCO in the conventional way: Presenting the airspace to be controlled in its entirety on the radar display. Hence, in the initial investigations of the Flight Centric ATC concept, the representation of the airspace, or more precisely the aircraft under control, was redesigned using several radar tiles. Originally, six tiles were available on this radar display, meaning that the maximum number of aircraft to be controlled was automatically restricted to six. Scaling was not possible and ATCO productivity was limited. This paper presents a possible approach for the design of a radar display, in which scalability is restored. This allows it to be used in the context of Flight Centric ATC without limiting ATCO productivity. The concept was evaluated by ten experts. Their feedback is also presented in the following.