While NASA has provided a number of tools to make the airspace safer and more efficient, another area of research is how to achieve such efficiencies where the domains of air and ground intersect and interact.

An air traveler today will see numerous advances in commercial aircraft technology without even knowing that NASA developed them, from supercritical wings and winglets to more efficient high-bypass turbofan engines, from composite structures to the glass cockpits and fly-by-wire controls for pilots on the flight deck, and many more that lie beneath the skin.

“That integration of arrival, surface, and departure is a major challenge,” said Cavolowsky. “We are working with the FAA to develop an integrated solution.

“We call it IADS: integrated arrival departure surface work. That is our next big challenge that we’re stepping up to. We are building these pieces as domain elements. And surface is part of the domain. So we have a tool that we’re working to help provide efficient scheduling of surface traffic that we are going to be merging with our arrival piece, so we have the surface transit from runway to gate and then also from gate to runway for departure and interface with the PDRC capability. So that’s our next task.”

These tools will be further developed and tested as an integrated package through Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstrations (ATD), ongoing simulations that constitute a powerful way of evaluating and testing the interaction and synergies of new tools and technologies.

 

Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstrations

The ATD project is a collection of technology development and demonstration activities targeting near-term benefits to stakeholders in the air transportation system. These NASA-developed technologies are designed to work with elements of NextGen, and are tested through rigorous simulations at NASA’s two air traffic observation laboratories, or ATOLs. At the ATOLS, researchers test everything from operational concepts and algorithms to flight deck displays. They also are testing and evaluating the integration of new vehicles, such as unmanned aerial systems, into the National Airspace System.

Cavolowsky stresses that the ATD activities are testing tools that will be delivered to the FAA in the near term. “In our portfolio, we set this up about a year-and-a-half or two years ago and said we want to make a difference near-term with the FAA – make a difference for NextGen.”

FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta has likened the FAA’s infrastructure of routes and the radars, air traffic control centers, and technologies that serve them to iPads, describing the tools that NASA develops as being akin to iPad applications, or apps.

“The FAA provides their infrastructure, their iPad,” Cavolowsky said. “We want to provide some important apps and decision support tools that will allow them to get the efficiency out of that infrastructure improvement they’ve put in. If we’re going to make a difference in NextGen – which is a 2025 expectation from FAA – to their stakeholders on Capitol Hill and the community, we have to be delivering these apps, the ATD tools in a time frame that is roughly 2020, because they need time to take that and work it into their implementation plans and insert into the system. So the Interval Management/Terminal Area Precision Spacing and Scheduling (IM-TAPSS) work, the surface and integrated arrival and departure surface work, applied traffic flow management for weather improvement en route – those are all things we are delivering to the FAA and to the community by 2020 so that they can extract that value near-term.”

One of the key elements of NextGen, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), uses Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to communicate precise, real-time position data with pilots and air traffic controllers, enabling safe separation of aircraft in the sky and on runways. Another important component, a networked system of global weather data, streams real-time information to pilots, aircraft, and controllers throughout the airspace. Convective weather, such as thunderstorms, currently causes about 70 percent of commercial aviation’s flight delays.

ATD activities include:

• The IM-TAPSS activity, which will demonstrate a set of arrival management software technologies. Using the more accurate and timely information provided via ADS-B and other NextGen technologies, IM-TAPSS will reduce the need for extensive coordination and negotiation between pilots and ground controllers. Onboard interval management tools, for example, will help guide pilot decisions to speed up or slow down, to merge precisely and optimize spacing relative to other aircraft before and during descent.
• The Integrated Arrival/Departure/Surface (IADS) activity will establish and adjust precision schedules for airports at gates and on runways, enabling arrival and departure fixes while ensuring efficient aircraft trajectory. The goal, according to ARMD, is to reduce the “unnecessary buffer imposed by the human workload” associated with these tasks, especially when traffic density is high.
• The Applied Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) activity will explore and develop technologies to execute optimally efficient flight paths. ARMD estimates that about 65 percent of the delays that occur today are potentially avoidable, and ATFM will demonstrate a suite of support tools, aircraft-based technologies, and real-time probabilistic weather information designed to avoid delays when possible.
• The Technologies for Assuring Safe Energy and Attitude State (TASEAS) activity is aimed at identifying risks and providing the knowledge needed to avoid, detect, mitigate, and recover from hazardous flight conditions. TASEAS activities will focus on enabling pilots to better understand and respond safely to complex situations – and will focus particularly on stall recognition and recovery to avoid loss of control accidents.

An air traveler today will see numerous advances in commercial aircraft technology without even knowing that NASA developed them, from supercritical wings and winglets to more efficient high-bypass turbofan engines, from composite structures to the glass cockpits and fly-by-wire controls for pilots on the flight deck, and many more that lie beneath the skin.

Some of the agency’s greatest contributions to commercial flight, however, remain invisible to the 1.7 million air travelers who take to the skies every day. NASA has made vital contributions to creating a 21st century “highway in the sky,” and continues to develop tools and technologies to make air travel ever safer and more efficient.

This article first appeared in the NACA/NASA Celebrating a Century of Innovation, Exploration, and Discovery in Flight and Space 1915-2015 publication.