Traffic management automation for non-towered airports

To increase flight operations capacity to meet future air transportation needs, a means must be found to provide air traffic management (ATM) services for increased safety and throughput at the thousands of underutilized non-towered airports across the nation. Towers are expensive to build, maintain, and operate so there is significant economic incentive to find alternate automatic solutions to fulfil this ATM need. This paper addresses this need by describing the requirements and ongoing research to develop ATM automation and cockpit technologies in lieu of providing manned towers at these airports. The functional system requirements to enable providing safe, efficient traffic management services to the airport users are described. Past and on-going research to develop non-towered airport ATM automation and associated cockpit procedures and technologies is summarized. A plan for prototype development and testing to expand upon past efforts to enable air transportation operations at non-towered airports is presented.