Air Transportation Systems Engineering

Major cities like London, New York, and Tokyo are served by several airports, effectively creating a Multi-Airport System (MAS), or Metroplex. The operations of individual Metroplex airports are highly interdependent, rendering their efficient management rather difficult. This paper proposes a framework for the design of dynamic arrival and departure routes in MAS Terminal Maneuvering Areas, which fundamentally changes the operation in MAS airspaces for much improved efficiency when compared to the current situation. The framework consists of three components. The first presents a new procedure for characterizing dynamic arrival and departure routes based on the spatio-temporal distributions of flights. The second component is a novel Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model for the prioritization of the dynamic routes, which takes into account a set of quantitative and qualitative attributes important for MAS operations. The third component is a priority-based method for the positioning of terminal waypoints as well as the design of three-dimensional, conflict-free terminal routes. Such a method accounts for the AHP-derived priorities while satisfying the minimal separation and aircraft maneuverability constraints. The developed framework is applied to a case study of the New York Metroplex, using aircraft trajectories during a heavy traffic period on typical day of operation in the New York Terminal Control Area in November 2011. The proposed framework is quantitatively assessed using the AirTOp fast-time simulation model. The results suggest significant improvements of the new design over the existing one, as measured by several key performance indicators such as travel distance, travel time, fuel burn, and controller workload. The operational feasibility of the framework is further validated qualitatively by subject matter experts from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the operator of the New York Metroplex.

Terminal area Air Traffic Management handles both arriving and departing traffic. To date, research work on terminal area operations has focused primarily on the arrival flow and typically departures are taken into account only in an approximate (average) manner. ...

On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 carrying flight MH-370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared during its flight. In this paper, we employ a model-based approach to capture and study the chain of events leading to the disappearance of the aircraft. We show that the critical reason for the aircraft's disappearance was a cyber-physical gap (CPG). The CPG is the difference between the real state of a physical entity and its state as perceived by cybernetic agents. Failure to acknowledge the CPG's existence, capture it in system models, and incorporate suitable mitigation mechanisms into systems exposed to CPG, has resulted in the past and may result in the future in severe consequences. In the MH-370 case, the plane's position and adherence to its flight course were misperceived by the air traffic control, resulting in failure to track and find the plane, to this day. Our approach to CPG analysis has been previously shown to assist both designers and users handle emergent situations resulting from CPGs, such as the Three-Mile Island nuclear reactor's partial meltdown accident in 1979. We propose several mitigation mechanisms, whose integration with air traffic control systems could help prevent similar cases in the future.

Οι στόχοι της πολιτικής αεροπορίας ήταν και συνεχίζουν να είναι ασφάλεια, ταχύτητα και  κανονικότητα, η δε σειρά τους προσδιόριζε πάντοτε την σημαντικότητά τους. Αυτό  σημαίνει ότι πρώτα επιζητείται η ασφάλεια και κατόπιν οι όποιοι άλλοι στόχοι. Έτσι όσο η βιομηχανία προχωρούσε στην επίτευξη του στόχου της ασφάλειας, μέσω συνολικών βελτιώσεων τόσο και η ζήτηση για αερομεταφορές αυξανόταν, με αποτέλεσμα την μείωση του κόστους των. Η μείωση του κόστους όμως πυροδοτούσε την εκ νέου αύξηση της ζήτησης η οποία με την σειρά της είχε ως αποτέλεσμα την εναέρια/επίγεια κυκλοφοριακή συμφόρηση και τις καθυστερήσεις πτήσεων. Η τεχνολογία με διαρκείς επαναληπτικούς κύκλους βελτίωνε το πρόβλημα των καθυστερήσεων, οι βελτιώσεις όμως αποδεικνύονταν και πάλι ανεπαρκείς από την εκ νέου αύξηση της ζήτησης, η οποία δημιουργούσε και πάλι συμφόρηση και νέες καθυστερήσεις. Παράλληλα με την συνεισφορά της όμως η τεχνολογία δημιούργησε ένα νέο πρόβλημα, αυτό της συνεχούς και πολλαπλής ολοκλήρωσής, πρόβλημα το οποίο αντιμετωπίζουν εκτός από τους κατασκευαστές και οι λήπτες αποφάσεων, και που απορρέει από την σύγχυσή τους αφενός στην επιλογή του στόχου και αφετέρου της αποτελεσματικότητας  της επιλογής των καλύτερων εναλλακτικών από πλευράς κόστους. Έτσι στην παρούσα εργασία αναπτύσσουμε ένα μοντέλο στρατηγικής λήψης αποφάσεων σε θέματα τεχνολογίας.

This commentary focuses on the challenges facing the implementation of the Single European Sky (SES) initiative. Intended to reduce the inefficiencies of air travel across the region, SES represents an attempt to transcend national systems of airspace management, replacing them with an organisationally and technologically integrated pan-continental system. So far, however, outcomes have not fully matched the original vision of SES. In this commentary I consider how outcomes to date reflect tensions between technocratic visions on one hand, and political and economic interests on the other. In outlining these tensions, I demonstrate how SES represents a fruitful problematique for geographic inquiry.