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controllers , in order to maintain a safe distance between aircraft and to optimize
traffic fluidity (reduce flight time, noise, and fuel consumption). Our goal in this
chapter is not to provide tools for real-time usages, but rather to detail offline
tools that analyze recorded trajectories in more depth. Without this real-time
constraint, ATCpractitioners can investigate, inmore detail, recorded trajectories
and therefore extract relevant information and perform three main tasks: improve
safety, optimize traffic, and monitor environmental considerations.
Improving safety can be detailed as:
1. Analyzing and understanding past conflicts (when two aircraft fail to meet
minimum safety distance) and then improving safety with feedback from past
experience,
2. Analyzing the accuracy of data provided by ground radar with probe trajectory
comparison (i.e., with GPS tracking and radar test plots), and
3. Filtering and extracting trajectories in order to reuse them for air traffic
controllers' training simulations.
Traffic optimization can be detailed as:
1. Devising new air space organization and flight routes to handle traffic
increase,
2. Studying profitability (i.e., number of aircraft on a specific flight route per
day, number of aircraft that actually land at a specific airport, etc.),
3. Calculating the metrics from the traffic: traffic density, spacing quality (mean
distance between aircraft), number of holding loops, number of rectilinear
trajectories (trajectories that are close to the shortest path from departure to
arrival), etc., and
4. Measuring the activity of each airport: number of takeoffs and landings per
hour, etc.
Finally, environmental considerations can be detailed as:
1. Comparing trajectories with environmental considerations (fuel consump-
tion, noise pollution, vertical profile comparison),
2. Detecting missed approach trajectories (which produce noise), lap training
landings (pilots who train to take off, fly around the air field and land; lap
training landings consume a lot of fuel), and
3. Counting continuous descending aircraft (since these aircraft maintain a con-
stant descent rate, they reduce their fuel consumption).
This list is not exhaustive but it gives the main tasks that ATC practitioners
perform. These tasks highlight the need for powerful tools to analyze aircraft
trajectories.
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