Collaborative automation systems for enhancing airport surface traffic efficiency and safety

Airport congestion constitutes a key traffic capacity problem in the national airspace system. This paper considers a concept for improving the surface operations at major airports through the use of automation to manage the complex traffic. The concept includes advanced surface-traffic-control automation and flight-deck automation, and it builds on advanced communication, navigation, and surveillance technologies to achieve a seamless integration of these two major components. The surface-traffic-control automation is based on the ground-operation situation awareness and flow efficiency (GO-SAFE) concept previously proposed and studied to enable more efficient usage of runways, especially in situations where active-runway crossing constitutes a significant taxi delay problem. To help achieve the potential GO-SAFE benefits, the flight-deck automation for reliable ground operation (FARGO) concept is proposed to provide the necessary flight-deck automation for enabling precision taxi control to comply with GO-SAFE advisories. The integrated system with highly coordinated automation systems will push the envelope of surface traffic performance to enhance capacity without compromising safety and taxi performance.