The Course, Velocity, and Altitude of Things to Come

A first-of-its-kind joint effort to manage flights across the airspaces of multiple countries by calculating aircrafts’ future positions as functions of known courses, speeds, and prevailing and projected meteorological and air-traffic conditions, has proved successful.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s six-day live flight demonstration included four unique scenarios and flights between the U.S., Japan, Singapore, and Thailand. 

Utilizing Trajectory Based Operations (TBO), air traffic experts in the aforementioned countries shared the trajectories of actual, flying aircraft and sequenced the routes of such for purpose of achieving optimal flight-paths across multiple regions. Controllers factored conditions such as weather, air traffic and airspace closures into their respective calculations.

Utilizing precise aircraft trajectory data—to include latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, and time—TBO predicts aircrafts’ actual and projected positions from takeoff to touchdown, thereby facilitating the determination of optimal flight-paths and seamless exchanges of data salient to in-flight aircraft between air and ground systems.

To keep pace with the projected global growth of passenger, cargo, and personal air-traffic, the conventions and infrastructures of the world’s air traffic control authorities must shift from cumbersome, fallible, often-subjective voice-based exchanges of information to definitive, objective, digital and mathematical means of data transfer. Under such a system, nations will be made immediately aware of aircraft routing, speed, and altitude changes enacted in other countries, and the manners in which subject changes will affect inbound and transient flights through their own airspace. So informed, air traffic control agencies may better plan the handling of aircraft entering their areas of responsibility.

The successful TBO test demonstrated the benefits of sharing and coordinating trajectory information across multiple countries, and the extent to which such capability enhances flight safety and improves the management and flow of air traffic. The collaboration promises to help minimize air traffic delays and flight disruptions, cut the cost and time of air-travel, and reduce fuel-burn and carbon-emissions by as much as ten-percent.

FMI: www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ang/icn/mr-tbo