The digital era has opened up a world of possibilities for more predictable and fuel-efficient arrivals at European airports. This webinar showcased the work of some SESAR 2020 projects towards a safer and more environmentally friendly descent, approach and landing.
The webinar kicked off with a look at the SESAR 2020 work on Arrival Management Streaming for optimised use of systemised airspace, which aims at streaming inbound aircraft through pre-defined merge points, controlling the entry time of arrivals into the systemised Extended TMA (E-TMA) for de-bunching and delay absorption purposes. This concept reduces the need for tactical vertical constraints to be imposed along the descent for traffic separation purposes, thereby supporting better descent profiles, flown using the systemised route structure, rather than aircraft being subject to radar vectors. The work is being carried out by PJ01-W2, targetting the busiest terminal manoeuvring areas (TMAs) in Europe.
Leading on from this, we also took a look at the new arrival planning processes adopted in Zurich for long-haul flights after having been validated by SESAR 2020 project PJ25 (SESAR solution 25.2). The aim is to avoid unnecessary holding of long-haul flights, arriving in Zurich first thing in the morning and hoping to land as soon as the airport opens. This is a radical new approach, which involves the collaboration of airlines, the Network Manager and Switzerland ANSP in the pre-planning of flight arrivals and synchronising take-off times across the globe. Flight progress is also monitored in real time in order to propose small adjustments to the arrival time en-route, in order to establish an accurate and achievable arrival sequence.
Finally, we dove into a ground breaking European innovation development: using plate lines beyond the runway tails in order to accelerate wake vortex decay. The concept has immediate safety benefits, because it reduces the risk of dangerous wake vortex encounters during final approach; in a next step, plate lines may enable reduced pairwise separation between successive arrivals where extra airport capacity is needed. After the success of the industrial research validations in SESAR 2020 Wave 1 project PJ.02, approach plates are now moving into the pre-industrialization phase part of the activities of SESAR 2020 project SORT, which is working towards the certification and installation of the world’s first plate prototype at Vienna International airport.
The webinar had also a very lively and intersting Q&A session with over 50 questions being raised.
Agenda:
Opening and scene setting
Olivia Nunez, ATM Expert, SESAR JU
Enhanced Arrivals and Departures (Descent Phase Support)
Sian Andrews, SESAR Solution Lead, NATS
Zurich’s streaming processes for early morning long-haul arrivals
Anaïs Lacroix, Capacity Management, Skyguide
Mitigating Wake Turbulence Risk During Final Approach via Plate Lines
Frank Holzäpfel, Senior Scientist, DLR
Questions and Answers
Moderated by Olivia Nunez, ATM Expert, SESAR JU