Ground Automation Impact on Enabling Continuous Descent in High Density Operations

Continuous descent procedures provide reduced fuel costs and environmental benefits over traditional approaches with multiple level -altitude segments. However, they are difficult to implement in high traffic density environments since it is hard for a human controller to merge and space descending traffic without procedural level segments. Thus, introducing continuous descent in such environments may lead to disadvantages such as reducing the ability of the controller to predict aircraft trajectories, increasing controller workload and increasing the probability of loss of separation. In order to compensate, continuous descent procedures may require larger separation margins to avoid s eparation losses, resulting in reduced throughput. One approach to enable continuous descent approaches in high density operations is the use of ground -based automation to reduce the workload of air traffic controllers by providing assistance with key fun ctions such as separation assurance and flow constraint conformance. A preliminary evaluation of the effect of ground automation on the success of continuous descent in a high density environment is presented. For comparison, a baseline case models current human controller procedures (based on feedback from subject matter experts) in merging and spacing traffic in a situation where demand exceeds capacity and aircraft are assigned scheduled times of arrival at a meter fix. The baseline is compared to a hum an controller assisted with various levels of ground automation which may provide speed and path stretch advisories to assist the controller in meeting the scheduled times of arrival as well as conflict detectio n advisories. The magnitude of demand exceeding capacity is varied to investigate the sensitivity of the benefit provided by the ground automation to such factors. The benefit of the ground automation is quantified through metrics including continuous descent success rate and throughput at the meter fix.