Automated Flight Management Tech for Pilots Landing in Busy Airports

In February, NASA's aeronautics research team - along with partners from Boeing, Honeywell, and United Airlines - completed a three-week flight campaign to test a new technology called 'Flight Deck Interval Management.' The prototype hardware and software is designed to automatically provide pilots with more precise spacing information on approach into a busy airport so that more planes can safely land in a given time.

Transcript

00:00:21 For anyone who travels we have all been here. Stuck on a flight circling the airport waiting for our turn to land or stuck on the ground waiting for our connecting flight to finally arrive. It seems like being delayed at airports has become the norm and with more and more people traveling by air every year if something isn't done then this problem will only get worse. Luckily for all of us NASA and their commercial partners have developed a new technology called flight deck interval management or FIM to minimize these types of delays and to make travel faster and more economical for all of us. Much of the early testing and research for this new approach was performed by using sophisticated computers and flight

00:01:09 simulators at NASA field centers, but to make sure this system will work for commercial flights NASA must now test this tech in real-world conditions on real flight tests. So NASA and its partners are here in Seattle Washington taking part in a comprehensive flight test campaign called ATD-1 or air traffic management technology demonstration -1. Once they're done here they hope to be one step closer to minimizing those annoying delays. To understand what the ATD-1 program is and how they hope to integrate the flight deck interval management system into commercial aircraft we must first understand why there are flight delays today.

00:01:59 Currently the system works like this - air traffic controllers are in charge of the spacing and sequencing of all inbound aircraft. The air traffic controllers use radar to track and manage all incoming aircraft giving speed up slow down and vector commands to the pilots coming in to land. The pilots comply with these commands and based on those instructions are placed in a landing queue in front of or behind other aircraft. Although our current air traffic management system and radar technologies does a good job of managing all those flights this is where delays begin. Radar can be imprecise and because voice communication between humans introduces delays the air traffic controllers are cautious and require greater spacing

00:02:46 between airplanes to maintain safety the spacing gets even larger at peak times and in bad weather causing more delays. Because researchers know why there are delays they think they know how to solve the problem. With the current technology that we use which a lot of it from the radar dates from the 40s and 50s with a lot of the procedures that we've built around it from the 60s 70s and 80s that were pretty close to the maximum capacity that we have with the current system. So this does specifically address that we think we've hit that limit and we're looking for a new way to do business so that it is more scaleable, more responsive, more efficient, so instead of relying just on radar which is still very effective we're relying on something called ADS-B which is

00:03:32 automatic dependent surveillance which is broadcasted. And so now we have the aircraft are actually sending out signals that all the other aircrafts and the ground can see. This gives us much more accurate information we can we can create more sophisticated plans and then the decision support tools that Ames built for the controllers and what we're building from the pilot allow the controllers and pilots both to execute to this much more sophisticated schedule than we have currently. With this new technology the pilots will no longer be reliant only on air traffic control but can follow automated directions on their onboard flight deck interval management system. Air traffic controllers are responsible for spacing with FIM and understanding ADS-B we now have the

00:04:20 capability on the airplane that we can get signals from the other airplanes and know where they're at. We know their state data we know their speeds their altitudes and so we can actually space them off of each other so that we're getting more airplanes through. Right now air traffic controllers space people further apart because they don't know necessarily the winds and how the airplane is reacting because every airplane that reacts differently. But if you put that information in the cockpit with the pilot and have the air traffic controller issue him a flight deck interval management of FIM clearance then he can space off the guy in front of him so you're getting more airplanes through. Not an easy problem to solve because right now you've got everybody

00:05:01 lined up but what about when you have those guys coming from the other direction, you've got to create a space for them and slide them into the chain to get them in also and so it'll be boom boom boom. Even when you get whether you will be able to target them in and get more airplanes in and out so that you're increasing your throughput which saves fuel, saves time, saves money ultimately for the consumer. it works like this - this nasa-developed software keeps track of the speed and position of the airplanes as they approach an airport. GPS signals determine each planes location and ground speed then broadcasts this information to satellites and ground stations about once every second. The

00:05:43 FIMS system automatically calculates how fast the plane should be traveling to maintain the proper spacing between them and displays that information on a tablet in the planes cockpit. The pilots see their speed and the speed of other aircraft around them in real-time allowing for safe distancing until the landing gear touches the ground. Because this software can predict the moment when an airplane touches down within a few seconds pilots and ground controllers plot each planes route more easily and efficiently. With tighter spacing, planes won't loiter in the air as long which means there is the potential to use less fuel, reduce noise and pollution for communities around airports and have fewer flight delays for the flying public. Working with

00:06:31 Boeing, Honeywell, the FAA, United Airlines and others this NASA led project performed the flight tests out of Boeing field and out of sea-tac airport in Seattle. For these tests they flew three research vehicles including Honeywell 757, a Honeywell business jet and a United Airlines 737. The planes each carrying the necessary tech ran simulated approaches and landings at a Grant County International Airport near Moses Lake which is about 120 miles east of Seattle. These tests were invaluable helping the team to see what works and what needs some tweaking. The average day will probably start off seven o'clock 7:30 we'll have a mass brief where we get all the flight crews and the flight test directors and engineers together. We'll talk about the date we're

00:07:23 going to have air traffic control representatives in the briefing with us as well. And then by nine o'clock 9:30 we be at the aircraft and takeoff from both Boeing fields which is where the two Honeywell aircraft will be and then Seattle Tacoma International which is where the United aircraft will be. As the day begins each plane takes off and they head to their testing area then follow the leader begins. It's interesting that you say follow the leader because that's a very simple description of what we're trying to do. There's one aircraft that would be identified as the lead aircraft. Their using an automatic dependent surveillance broadcast signal. The aircraft are following them have been given instructions - follow your

00:08:09 leader - follow that aircraft by 180 seconds. And now what we've developed are software tools and displays that can show the flight crews whether they're at that 180 seconds - whether they're going a little bit too quickly or with a little bit too slow - If they're a little bit out of position it can guide them back into that position with these tools and everybody stays in line and the flow of traffic continues on down to the runway very smoothly. So far this GPS based technology has been handily guiding airplanes in from cruise altitudes at 35,000 feet all the way through descent and then to their final approaches with incredible precision. So, researchers are feeling competent that they are on the right track. Currently more than half a billion passengers fly every day here in

00:09:03 the US and that number is expected to double to about a billion passengers per year by 2030. If we have the ability to land a few more aircraft at each Airport every hour it would add up to thousands of extra passengers per day getting to their destinations on time. Multiplied over the entire country it's easy to see why this idea is so intriguing and why NASA and its partners are working hard to solve this problem. More testing will continue in the months to come but as for right now this approach looks incredibly promising.