A pseudo ramp manager workstation for the laboratory development of airline-ATC collaborative arrival planning tools

Significant changes to air traffic management and the relationship between the air traffic control (ATC) service provider and the system user are expected as the government/industry "free-flight" initiative begins to take hold. Under the free-flight paradigm, airspace users would select their own path and speed in real-time, with air traffic control imposing restrictions only when necessary. Shared decision making and collaboration between system users and service providers would be a central tenet, allowing increased flexibility of air traffic management operations and allowing system users to operate in their preferred manner. Automation decision support tools will play a critical role in assisting both airspace users and service providers in operating in the free-flight environment. Essential to the development of such new automation aids are laboratory simulations of such tools in the free-flight environment. In this work, an airline airport ramp manager workstation is described. The workstation was developed to support the laboratory simulation and development of collaborative airline-ATC aircraft arrival planning tools. Airline airport ramp towers at major "hub" airports orchestrate the arrival and departure of dozens of aircraft in rapid succession. Future decision support tools are being proposed that would allow the airline user to influence aircraft arrival characteristics for maximum operational benefit. Such characteristics include arrival sequencing and scheduling. The airline airport ramp manager workstation developed mocks essential aspects of airline systems commonly used at airport ramp towers to enable realistic simulations of new airline ramp tower decision support tools. The workstation presents a "Gantt chart" type display of arriving and departing aircraft sorted by airport gate, as typically used by "hub and spoke" air carriers in their airport ramp towers. The workstation employs a modern object-oriented design and is highly adaptable toward use in a variety of decision support tool simulations.