An integrated approach to air traffic management to achieve trajectory based operations

An overarching goal of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) is to improve predictability of the air traffic system as a whole in order to increase capacity and efficiency while maintaining safety and incorporating user preferences. The achievement of these goals requires tight integration of new technologies and adjustments to operational procedures as envisioned in Trajectory Based Operations. This paper presents a concept that directly integrates the trajectory generated by the aircraft's Flight Management System with air traffic management operations. The concept is an application of the principles of self-organization (swarm theory) where safety and traffic flow management goals are achieved by broadcasting all the operational constraints on a 4D-Grid and populating the grid with the 4D-trajectories of all other flights. As new flights get added to the system the remaining capacity is in full view to prospective operators who will be able to plan flights using available capacity. The paper shows how self-organized air traffic leads to optimality, provides details of the concept, describes near term implementation strategies and explores long term implications.