What is Extended AMAN (E-AMAN)? How does this SESAR solution work? Who benefits and when will the solution be deployed? Answers to these and other questions were provided at a dedicated technical demonstration on E-AMAN at the World ATM Congress in Madrid, on 10 and 11 March 2015. With presentations and on-site platforms from DSNA, ENAV, Eurocontrol MUAC, NATS, NORACON, Selex ES and Thales, participants had a chance to see how the solution is applied in different contexts around Europe.
Lars Stridsman, NORACON, set the scene by spelling out the current AMAN system and the challenges that E-AMAN seeks to address. Today, arriving airport traffic is managed and sequenced in the airspace close to the airport. Faced with increasing traffic, airports are looking for ways to overcome congestion and reduce the need for holding. The SESAR Solution, E-AMAN, allows for the sequencing of traffic in preparation for landing much earlier than is currently the case, by extending the AMAN horizon from the airspace around the airport, to a point further upstream, in neighbouring en-route airspace. With E-AMAN, controllers in the neighbouring sectors can instruct pilots to adjust the aircraft speed before beginning descent towards the destination airport, thereby reducing the need for holding.
Validations exercises have already taken place in Rome, Amsterdam, Malmö and London showing that, for each flight, holding time near airports is significantly reduced, which also delivers a valuable reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Ramón Raposo, NATS, presented the first operational cross-border implementation of the Extended-AMAN concept, known as XMAN, for arrivals at London Heathrow, the world’s busiest dual runway airport where 65% of all arrivals experience stack holding. Developed with the UK-Ireland FAB and FABEC, XMAN aims to cut the time aircraft circle in holding stacks, reducing the environmental impact of arriving aircraft and saving airspace users fuel and money. To achieve this, a sharing strategy is used to transfer delay from the busy and fuel-intensive TMA holding stacks into the more fuel efficient cruise phase of the flight.
The Heathrow XMAN relies on the coordination with Upper Area Control Centres at Eurocontrol MUAC, NATS Prestwick, IAA Shannon, DSNA Brest and Reims. In his presentation, Gérald Regniaud, DSNA, gave details of the SWIM compliant information sharing and system infrastructure behind the delay-sharing strategy that provides controllers upstream access to AMAN information, allowing them to instruct aircraft accordingly. Since going live in April 2014, XMAN has resulted in a reduction of up to a minute in holding times for those flights influenced by the trial, saving airlines around €1.25 million in fuel and 5,000 tonnes of CO2, as well as reducing noise for communities underneath the stacks.
Another example of the application of E-AMAN was presented by Maurizio Romano, ENAV and Francesco Barbaria, Selex ES for arrivals at Rome-Fiumicino, where the horizon was extended to 250 nautical miles: this allowed the arrival sequence and the relevant advisories for the flights to be distributed in the en-route phase, 60 minutes before the approach. The system developed for Rome is integrated into the controller’s working position, allowing a dynamic apportionment of the delay and allowing the sequence manager is to optimise the AMAN sequence where necessary. The exercises in Italy highlight the efficiency gains and environmental benefits that can be achieved with Extended AMAN. Concretely, this amounts to up to savings of 84kg of fuel per flight and a reduction of 268kg of CO2. In Rome-Fiumicino, E-AMAN was also validated in combination with i4D/CTA and ASAS spacing, illustrating again the complementarity between SESAR Solutions.
It is very important that the solutions developed within SESAR are not only compatible with one another, but when applied together can increase ATM performance. As part of his intervention, Mustapha El Mizeb, Thales, presented the results of validation exercises that took place in Stockholm to show the feasibility of applying spacing manoeuvres within an E-AMAN environment, in which initial Four Dimension Trajectory Management (i4D) and controlled time of arrival (CTA) are also in operation. The exercises confirmed the benefits as well as the maturity of the systems.
All in all, the benefits observed in these locations provide a convincing argument for the application of Extended AMAN for busy airports. Closing the demo, Theo Hendriks, Eurocontrol MUAC, presented the next steps for Extended AMAN. The solution is one of several SESAR Solutions which have been packaged into in the EU's Pilot Common Project, for timely, coordinated and synchronised deployment in 24 airports across Europe by 2024. Beyond the obvious need for strong coordination, Mr Hendriks noted that it will be critical to have connectivity between systems – airports, the Network Manager, ANSPs and standardised procedures. Under the SESAR 2020 Programme, very large scale demonstrations will be conducted in preparation for deployment, as well as some further validation will take place to look at the next phase of the solution.