An ENAV led flight trial campaign was jointly conducted with the SESAR members Airbus, Leonardo and SICTA to validate a number of SESAR Solutions to optimise operations for the terminal areas of Milan and Rome, as well as Malpensa airport.

The 3-day flight trial campaign was performed in June and tested several key SESAR concepts and solutions, which have the potential to increase flight efficiency and predictability as well as improve airport operations.

The solutions studied in Rome Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA) included initial four dimension trajectory (i4D)/Controlled Time of Arrival (CTA) operations supported by sequencing and merging (ASPA-IM-S&M) including its integration into an Extended Arrival Manager (E-AMAN) horizon, while those ones tested in Milan TMA and Malpensa airport addressed the use of data-link messages (D-TAXI) communications between the tower controllers and the flight crew during surface movement, the on-board Manual Taxi Routing functionality, as well as enhanced arrival procedures. As preparatory activity to the Flight Trial execution, the campaign was preceded by a wide-range of real time simulations which preliminary demonstrated the operational feasibility and benefits of these solutions.

Taking place at Roma Area Control Centre (ACC), the first series of flight trials demonstrated how, thanks to the i4D/ CTA combination, the aircraft - while still in En-route phase - could communicate its airborne trajectory to the ground and respect the time constraints (CTA) in Rome TMA. ASPA manoeuvres enabled the aircraft to maintain assigned time-based separation without any other speed instructions from air traffic control. The trial demonstrated that i4D-enabled aircraft can self-manage their speed profile to achieve a CTA. The use of CTA offers new promising operational opportunities to enhance the management of aircraft sequences, allowing environmentally optimised flight profiles and optimised traffic delivery into terminal manoeuvring areas.

This first flight trial used Enav platform equipped with advanced trajectory-based support tools provided by Leonardo, its data-link infrastructure along with Airbus A320 flight test aircraft. The ASPA and i4D + CTA procedure was repeated for several runs and was also used to test the efficiency and functionalities of two different flight management system (FMS) installed on board (Honeywell and Thales). Alitalia commercial flights were identified as the “target” for the ASPA manoeuvres.

Meanwhile, live trials in Milan tested advanced approach procedures to reduce noise impact, improve fuel efficiency and increase runway capacity (derived from wake turbulence separations and runway occupancy time’s reduction with a potential increase of capacity in noise restricted periods). A series of enhanced arrival procedures were validated to investigate the feasibility and acceptability of these procedures by controllers and flight crew, as well as the integration of the enhanced procedures in the day-to-day operations. Furthermore, the flight test proved expected environmental benefits. Focusing on airport operations, the exchange of a specific set of ground instructions/clearances via data-link between tower controller and flight crew was performed on the closing day of the flight trial campaign. The main observed benefits refer to the increase of both controllers’ and flight crews’ situational awareness (resulting from a reduction of misunderstanding) and a reduction of their workload. Furthermore, in a mixed mode (R/T and data-link) environment, the on-board Manual Taxi Routing functionality was investigated as well to input the taxi route issued by the controllers in the avionics system to ensure its visualization in the cockpit display. This enhanced guidance assistance to flight crews resulted in a further increase of flight crews’ situational awareness. The flight trials were performed using an Airbus A320 test aircraft and supported by Milan ACC and Malpensa Tower Control Centre, powered by Leonardo systems for advanced ground Routing and Guidance services.