REPORT ON THE EUROCONTROL MAASTRICHT UAC ROUTE OCCUPANCY

Transcription

1 REPORT ON THE EUROCONTROL MAASTRICHT UAC ROUTE OCCUPANCY Maryna IVANENKO 15 TH October 2010

2 1. IDENTIFICATION SHEET Document title REPORT ON THE EUROCONTROL MAASTRICHT UAC ROUTE OCCUPANCY Edition date October 15, 2010 Contact Maryna Ivanenko Traineeship duration August 16, 2010 October 15, 2010 Division OPS-ANP - 1 -

3 2. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. IDENTIFICATION SHEET TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE TASK PERFORMED DURING THE TRAINING AT EUROCONTROL RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION AUXILIARY ACTIVITIES FINAL REMARKS

4 3. INTRODUCTION EUROCONTROL, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, is an intergovernmental organisation made up of 38 Member States and the European Community. It s primary objective is the development of a seamless, pan-european air traffic management (ATM) system. They contribute to making European aviation safer, performance-driven and environmentally sustainable. EUROCONTROL was originally founded in 1960 as a civil-military organisation to deal with air traffic control for civil and military users in the upper airspace of its six founding European Member States. EUROCONTROL has developed into a vital European repository of ATM excellence, both leading and supporting ATM improvements across Europe. Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre General information The Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC), managed by EUROCONTROL on behalf of four European States, provides air traffic control for the upper airspace (above 24,500 feet, or 7,500 metres) of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and north-west Germany. The lower airspace is managed by the national air traffic control agencies Belgocontrol, Luchtverkeersleiding Nederland (LVNL) and Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) respectively. Located either above or close to the four major international hub airports of Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London as well as other key terminal areas such as Brussels, Düsseldorf, Berlin or Copenhagen, the MUAC airspace is one of the busiest and most challenging in Europe, with a complex structure and a significant portion of climbing and descending flights up to 80% in some busy sectors. To ensure greater efficiency, the airspace is organised on a European rather than a national basis, driven not by geopolitical boundaries but by the operational requirements of traffic flows. Over the years, MUAC has built itself a reputation for excellent safety performance and traffic fluidity on top of outstanding economies of scale and exceptional productivity. MUAC has been in operation since The Mission of the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre is to provide safe, impartial, customer oriented, cost efficient air traffic services in the Four States airspace and to validate innovative Air Traffic Management operational solutions. Its Vision is to be the leading air navigation service provider operating in a large European airspace block

5 Airspace size The MUAC airspace covers 260,000 km2 over Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and north-west Germany. It is a genuine and still unique example of European integration in the spirit of the Single European Sky. Cross-border sectors Three main sector groups (the Brussels Sector Group, the Hannover Sector Group and the Delta/Coastal Sector Group) cover the Brussels Upper Information Region (UIR), the Hannover Upper Information Region (UIR) and the Amsterdam Flight Information Region (FIR). The sectors have been designed for maximum efficiency from the air traffic management point of view and transcend national borders. Air traffic Some 1.5 million flights pass through MUAC s airspace each year, making it the second busiest air traffic control centre in Europe in terms of traffic volume after London. The daily traffic peak currently stands at around 5,000 flights (summer). 15% of all flights passing through the European continent use MUAC s airspace. Currently, 99.7% of the aircraft travelling through the airspace enjoy a delay-free service. The increase in traffic in the last ten years ( ) amounts to 29%. The daily traffic record was broken on 4 July 2008, with a total of 5,024 flights

6 Civil-military cooperation Airspace is a scarce resource which must be shared between various partners - civilians and military. At MUAC, civil air traffic services are provided in close cooperation with the military partners responsible for operational air traffic in the Four States. Data-interchange systems ensure that both civil and military controllers obtain accurate information from their counterparts. The concept of the Flexible Use of Airspace, according to which the military authorities release their airspace to civilian users whenever possible, is applied on a daily basis, generating important gains in capacity. In order to facilitate the closest possible cooperation between civil and military air traffic, a Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) unit, controlling military operations over north-west Germany, is located on MUAC s premises. By using the same system and the same data, and by sitting side by side, the civil and military controllers ensure not only the highest level of safety but also the best performance - for both Operational Air Traffic and General Air Traffic. Air navigation services for military aircraft flying in Belgium and the Netherlands are provided from the respective military control facilities in both countries. An automatic exchange of flight-plan and track data between MUAC and the military partners in Belgium (Belga Radar Air Traffic Control Centre, Semmerzake) and the Netherlands (Military Air Traffic Control Centre, Nieuw Milligen) has been in place for several decades already. Where the MUAC track picture is used as a back-up for their local tracker, the flight plan data allows the military units to safely guide the military flights through the web of busy civilian airways. Productivity The productivity of an air navigation service provider is a key parameter which contributes directly to its overall performance. In spite of high traffic density and airspace complexity MUAC is the most productive air navigation service provider in Europe. Productivity improvements can be achieved by optimising air traffic management and human resources and by using advanced technology to support this process. Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC) In order to respond to the needs and future challenges of the air transport industry, MUAC and its partners are currently working on the creation of FABEC, a large functional airspace block which aims to implement multinational management of the airspace of six countries (Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The FABEC airspace accounts for 55% of all European traffic and is seen as a cornerstone of the Single European Sky

7 4. THE TASK PERFORMED DURING THE TRAINING AT EUROCONTROL With the Single European Sky legislation, adopted in 2004, and the expected creation of Functional Airspace Blocks designed to create greater synergies between Europe s air navigation service provider organisations and to cope efficiently with future air navigation growth, multinational cooperation initiatives in the air traffic management sector will multiply. The Single European Sky will mark the beginning of a fundamental reform in European air traffic management and give a new impetus to the European airspace consolidation process, following the example of the Maastricht Centre. For several decades, the four States have enjoyed a long-lasting cooperation in jointly managing multinational, high-density airspace. Efficient airspace design has been put in place across the four States in order to combat fragmentation, to achieve maximum operational and technical efficiencies as well as economies of scale. In order to manage the air traffic, air traffic controllers traditionally work on sectors. A sector is a portion of the airspace under the responsibility of a team of two or three air traffic controllers. In line with the concept of seamless airspace management, the sectors at the Maastricht Centre transcend territorial boundaries and ensure maximum efficiency from the air traffic management point of view. The number of aircraft accepted every hour within a sector varies between 40 and 60, depending on the location of the sector, the complexity of the traffic flows involved and the time of day/week. An air traffic controller can monitor up to 25 aircraft at any one time, but this figure varies throughout the day and also depends on the time of year. Three main sector groups (the Brussels Sector Group, the Hannover Sector Group and the Delta/Coastal Sector Group) form the airspace of the Maastricht Centre. They are very flexible and in the case of high traffic density can be easily split as vertical as horizontal. In total, 22 sectors can be operated in a dynamic and flexible way from the MUAC Division Flight Level 245 to UNL. 12 upper sectors extend from the internal DFL 335/345 to UNL. The upper air routes form a web through the three sector groups and outline an effective network, managed at central European level, linking the different regions of the continent. The sectors extending over the 260,000 km2 airspace have been designed in order to cope flexibly with the fluctuations in air traffic demand. From an environmental and economic point of view, they allow the aircraft to follow the most economical climb and descent patterns to and from the lower airspace. But experts predict that between now and 2020 the volume of air traffic will double, making Europe's air traffic some of the densest and most complex in the world. This is a big challenge for all air navigation service providers and of course for MUAC as well. For handling increased amounts of traffic, for better prediction the amount of required air traffic controllers, system overload and ensuring of safe and effective provision of air traffic control services, changes should be implemented in MUAC Airspace. The OPS Airspace & Network Planning Section, where I worked, proposed 2 solutions. These are: Implementation of Free Route Airspace Maastricht Reorganisation of sectors - 6 -

8 But before implementing such changes, investigation work should be done. Firstly, it is very important to make an analysis of routes and network, for realising which routes are dense and have the biggest influence on the traffic. Because in the case of an increased amount of flights the places with intensive traffic can become hot spots, which will be hard to deal with for air traffic controllers and for the system

9 5. RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION My task was to investigate the occupancy of routes, which cross the MUAC Airspace. First, for better understanding the situation, I decided to make the visual analysis of air traffic. For this purpose I had to familiarize myself with SAAM (System for traffic Assignment and Analysis at a Macroscopic level). It is an integrated system for wide and local design, evaluation, analysis and presentation of Air Traffic Airspace/TMA scenarios. SAAM has such functions as: Modelling Visualisation/Presentation Analysis Simulation For my analysis I needed the function of visualization and analysis. SAAM is entirely built on 2D/3D/4D Geographical Information System (GIS) with the possibility of generating time based animations. All modelling and analysis activities are integrated in this GIS platform and fully benefit from the 3D visualisation, animation and stereo. For instance you can design your airspace in 3D to check interaction while aircraft are flying on their 3D trajectories. Images/animations are interactively panned, zoomed and rotated with the mouse. The camera location and/or look at point can be moved or linked to a flying object. Objects such as aircraft, airspace volumes, points or lines can be moved, set on/off, or have their graphical attributed (e.g. colour or size) smoothly changed based on time events managed through the animations. Users can add titles and bitmaps to their design. Pictures/animations can be grouped into a SAAM presentation file. Different sources of data can be selected for analysis and comparisons; CFMU flight plan, CFMU CPR data, imported radar data (including ASTERIX) or simply data coming out from SAAM modelling tools. For my work I used radar data which are represented in.so6 files. Each file gives the flight information based on departure, arrivals, route points, companies, crossed sectors and aircraft type. On the pictures below the MUAC airspace and flights, which cross it, are represented. SAAM. Airport/TMA design & presentation. LFPG Arrivals in

10 SAAM. MUAC Airspace. Top view SAAM. MUAC Airspace. Side view According to my task I had to find the busiest routes. The difficulty was in separating MUAC traffic from traffic controlled by DFS, LVLN and Belgocontrol. Because under the MUAC Airspace there are a lot of TMA areas, such as Brussels TMA, Amsterdam TMA, Luxembourg TMA, Dusseldorf TMA, etc. The lower airspace traffic interferes with upper airspace traffic, making visual detection of the densest routes difficult

11 That s why I created the similar airspace just below FL 245. I made it opaque for better highlighting of routes

12 Analysing the pictures and data processing by SAAM per different days all over the year I made a conclusion that the densest routes are following: During winter season: During summer season: 1. EDDM_EDDH 2. EDDK_EDDT 3. EDDT_EDDK 4. EDDH_EDDM 5. EDDF_EGLL 1. EDDH_EDDM 2. EDDM_EDDH 3. EDDF_EDDH 4. EDDF_EGLL 5. EDDK_EDDT They have the biggest influence on the traffic. The biggest part of them is spreading from FL245 till FL395. I noticed that traffic is different during the year, month, days of the week and period of the day. It depends on: the military activities, which is normally not active in the weekends winter and summer schedule preferences of tourist agencies during the week and season nature of customer and business Traffic per Monday Traffic per Sunday In order to define the route occupancy it is important to take into account the time scale. Because one flight can create a problem during working days, but have no influence at the weekend. It is important to pay attention on this during the reshaping of sectors. If one makes the sectors very flexible in accordance to time variable, it can significantly decrease the ATCO workload, exclude the overload inside of the sector thereby making traffic safer. That s why I had an idea to create a database which will show for all who are interested in the occupancy of routes the dependency on time. I worked with Microsoft Office Excel and Visual Basic for Application. At first I familiarised myself with the book Excel 2003 VBA Programmer s References and then I started to create the programme step by step

13 The programme will be useful for those working in OPS Airspace & Network Planning Section but not only for them. The name of the programme is Traffic Data Analyser. With the help of it, the user can easily obtain the information about number of flights per selected period in accordance with different parameters, such as aircraft type, origin or destination point, city pair, country pair, airlines and total traffic. It produces the data chart and graph by the instrumentality of which the user can get a general idea about the traffic. To open the programme the user should address himself to W:\Traffic Data Analyser\TDA. The programme has a user friendly interface: The main advantage of this programme is that it gives the possibility to find a relationship between the traffic per season, day of week and in the future per period of day, which gives the ability to realise how the sectors should be built to maximize all potential of airspace use. Combining facilities of SAAM and TDA, I investigated the behaviour of flights in different periods of time and found an incredible strong dependence of flight per season and day of week which repeats over the years. Let s consider a flight from Munchen to Hamburg during summer season. On Annex 1a in general two Sundays are compared in SAAM. It is easy to detect that the flights on these Sundays are almost similar. The effect is improved with the data produced by TDA (Annex 1b). The number of flights from Munchen to Hamburg over 8 weeks creates almost a straight line. In 2009 the situation is similar

14 Further analysis of other periods confirms this dependency. In Annexes 2(a,b) and 4(a,b) the analysis of Fridays during summer and winter seasons 2009, 2010 is done. Annex 3(a,b) describes behaviour of Sunday flights during the winter period. Making an analysis in such a way, one cannot only find the dependency in the past but one can also predict traffic in the future, enabling a forecast. After such an analysis, paying attention to that fact that MUAC has Trajectory Based Flight Data Processing System, which allows sectors to be flexible, I propose to reorganize the sectors not on a static base with fixed boundaries, but on a flexible and dynamic base, which will depend on the season, weekday and daytime variables. Forecast ability of analysis, as described above, will significantly simplify the problem. The possible shape of sectors can be planned in advance in consideration of all peculiarities of expected traffic. I will continue developing TDA via Internet. The following functions are planned to be created in the near future: DayTime Parameter: this programme will produce the data about the number of flights during the day period, allows an occupancy route analysis with the day scale which will help to reshape the sectors in accordance with daytime activities Splitting per aircraft: this function will show what number of aircraft operate between definite city pair (country pair, origin, destination), what is important in decision making about which route should be reorganized at first making flights more efficient (in fuel burn and aviation emission parameters) Comparison characteristics: the ability to compare city pair (country pair, origin, destination, operator, aircraft and total traffic) with itself in different period of time or two or more city pairs (country pairs, origins, destinations, operators, aircraft and total traffic) with each other. It will definitely help in future estimation of route occupancy and reshaping of airspace, giving the idea which route is more significant. It means in accordance with which flow the sectors should be reshaped in which period of year, day of week or period of day Visualization tool: ability to see the tracks of flight choosing City Pair (CountryPair, Origin, Destination, Operator, Aircraft and Total Traffic) per specific day. It will give more precise understanding of how the airspace is occupied. The programme uses the data from.so6 files. It can be only useful in case of regular updating of these files in W:\Traffic Data Analyser\Information folder. Developing this programme I learnt a lot about programming in VBA, what definitely will help me in my future studying at the University. During my study over the last 2 months I also had the following idea: it will be interesting to develop the tool in such a way that when it is fed with different scenarios such as for night or day situation, summer or winter, day of the week, bad weather in a certain area or even strikes, it would be able to generate the most optimal sector shape and configuration

15 6. AUXILIARY ACTIVITIES Besides developing the programme I had a great opportunity to learn about the Air Traffic Controller s job. I had lectures about Flight Planning, the Basic Introduction into Air Traffic Control and Human Factors, learnt about radar screen and Maastricht Fallback System, got experience as ATCO in the simulation room during several times and visited the OPS room to look how it works in reality. I also had discussions about Quantification of Barrier Model for the Maastricht Risk Picture, Safety Assessment, the Key Performance Indicator for Flight Efficiency, Operational En- Route Performance and Evaluation of Separation Provision for En-Route Sectors. I took part in a staff meeting about the future of MUAC made by OPS Airspace & Network Planning Section. I was involved in the Free Route Airspace Maastricht project. I learned a lot about the concept of its implementation and doing this I created an interest in a future theses about a possible integration of Free Route Airspace in Ukraine. I have made familiarisation tours through the MUAC buildings, and saw the Engineering workshops, computer rooms and the power supply installations. I visited the Institute of Air Navigation situated in Luxembourg. Training room for ATCO, tower simulator and I received a lot of material in IANS library. Schiphol Airport, LVNL was visited including ACC OPS room, and we followed LVNL lectures about Human Factors and SESAR. Brussels Headquarters was visited, and the Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU). I followed a lecture about CFMU Human Machine Interface. The CFMU/ NOps/NOD/TC was attended and I obtained a certificate of completion of this course. I had a briefing about military areas in MUAC s Area of Responsibility and visited the Deutsche Flugsicherung Unit DFS CC-UM, located in OPS room. I experienced to make lecture by myself for trainees from a Dutch high school on the basis of material which I learned in my University

16 7. FINAL REMARKS For this wonderful occasion I want to thank Nicolas De Koninck, Hanny Prevoo, Imke Willems, Karl-Heinz Kloos, Harald Matthes, Ralph Hoelscher, Robin Hickson and Fred Könnemann. In the area of ATCO training: Ralf Erdmann Uwe Feldner, Vincent Laeremans and Choi Rosenkranz. At the CFMU: Richard Dyett. For help and support in creating of TDA: Rudiger Ehrmanntraut, Ilona Gomon-Sitova, Fred De Cock, Andrew Osborne and Arn Essers. For providing me the detailed information about FRAM: Dirk De Herdt, Rafaël Hendriks, Stephen Mohhamed and Jean-Marie Leboutte For introduction to civil-military cooperation: Daniel Leenders and Gerhard Schutz. I had interesting lectures from: Philippe Domogala, Rob Ophelders, Keith Cartmale and Stig Sandved. For help in the preparation of this report: Mireille Roman and Josette Noelmans. For LVNL: Marjolein Wentink and Evert Westerveld. For the beautiful visit to Luxembourg Airport: Luc Willems and IANS Gregor Graham. And many others!!!!!!!!!!

17 Annex 1a Characteristics of flights in the summer season on Sundays

18 Annex 1b Comparison of one flight in 2009 and 2010 summer season on Sundays

19 Annex 2a Characteristics of flights in the summer season on Fridays

20 Annex 2b Comparison of one flight in 2009 and 2010 summer season on Fridays

21 Annex 3a Characteristics of flights in the winter season on Sundays

22 Annex 3b Comparison of one flight in 2009 and 2010 winter season on Sundays

23 Annex 4a Characteristics of flights in the winter season on Fridays

24 Annex 4b Comparison of one flight in 2009 and 2010 winter season on Fridays