BULATSA and Airbus D&S conducted validation sessions under project PJ.10.02b

Two separate validation sessions under project PJ.10.02b “Improved Separation Management” were conducted between November 2018 and January 2019 by BULATSA’s highly trained air traffic controllers (ATCOs). The project is part of PJ 10 PROSA (Controller Tools and Team Organisation for the Provision of Separation in the Air Traffic Management) and is funded by SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) under the SESAR2020: 2016-2019 multi-annual Programme and a Grant Agreement No. 734143 within the European Commission’s Program for Scientific Research and Innovation.
The solutionis being developed by Airbus D&S, Airbus Commercial Aircraft and BULATSA. It aims to further improve the quality of separation management services between aircraft that overfly en-route and/or in the controlled areas of airports, by introducing further mechanisms for automation and integration of relevant additional information.
Within the validation, BULATSA’s ATCOs reviewed the results achieved so far, the technological developments, the expected benefits and the degree of maturity of the prototype, as well as its applicability to different types of operational environments. Areas of improvement and optimal or non-standard solutions with high added value were identified to detect and resolve potential conflicts.
Based on ATCOs’ workload assessment and analysis of the effectiveness and applicability of the developed functionalities, PJ 10 2b Team processed the behavior of the TESLA prototype in terms of performance indicators in the areas of Safety, Capacity, Environment and Human Factor. It was concluded that taking into account the meteorological information in the TESLA prototype and assessing the feasibility of various possible conflict avoidance solutions would relieve the workload of ATCO, optimizing the decision-making process and raising the situational awareness. Therefore, it is believed that deploying the TESLA prototype could have a positive impact on the overall capacity of the services offered.
A demonstration exercise showing the present capabilities of the TESLA prototype will be presented at the Airbus D&S stand during the World ATM Congress in Madrid, 12-14 March 2019.