Dette er en steike god og informativ orientering om utfordringene som ligger i kortene for ATC. (Red.)
Newer Actors Driving
Evolution Of Air Traffic Management
Bill Carey September
28, 2020
Credit:
SpaceX Starlink
With
aircraft movements reduced, technology deployments slowed and many
professionals working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the air
traffic management industry is contemplating future operational scenarios and
what were once considered nontraditional actors in the airspace system.
Despite the
pandemic’s impact on traditional aviation operations, the development of small
drones, urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles, supersonic jets, commercial
spacecraft and high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) and balloons continues
apace.
·
Newer airspace entrants represent new revenue
·
FAA expects to certify UAM aircraft by 2022
·
Airbus and Boeing deliver joint airspace vision
The
envisioned mix of new electric- and jet-powered vehicles with differing
performance characteristics, high- and low-altitude flights, and integrated
manned and unmanned aircraft operations is driving the need for new air traffic
management (ATM) procedures and regulations, says the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO).
“With
unprecedented innovation taking place in the aviation industry, and with the current
COVID-19 situation, the long-held assumptions of the future of the aviation
industry will be substantially reshaped,” the U.N. agency advises.
Air
navigation service providers that are struggling to remain financially viable
during the pandemic, as well as third-party service providers, see
nontraditional airspace actors as a potential source of new revenue streams.
The
state-owned Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) is deriving revenue from
high-altitude balloons. In July, Telkom Kenya and Alphabet’s Loon launched a
new mobile internet service in Kenya. Loon supports the network with a fleet of
35 balloons, each equipped with LTE wireless base stations, that move in
constant motion through the stratosphere at 20 km (65,000 ft.) over eastern
Africa.
A Loon high-altitude balloon carries an LTE antenna, with a mobile gantry crane launcher in the foreground. Credit: Loon
“That is a
revenue stream for us because we charge them navigation fees like other
airplanes,” says KCAA Director General Gilbert Kibe.
With the
number of traffic operations at U.S. Core 30 airports down by 51% from normal
in mid-September, drones and UAM vehicles figured prominently during the annual
Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) Technical Symposium, which was held
virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Describing
his branch as a kind of gateway into the airspace system, Earl Lawrence,
executive director of the FAA’s Aircraft Certification Service, said that his
office is working on numerous type certification (TC) projects involving
electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft and drones intended for
infrastructure inspection and delivery missions.
The branch
is processing 30 unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) type certification
applications. Of those applicants, 44% are seeking to fly drones under Part 91
operating rules that apply to general aviation pilots and 32% under Part 135
for commercial air-carrier services.
The balance
of 24% of applicants seek to operate drones under both Part 91 and Part 107,
the regulation that applies to commercial drones weighing less than 55 lb.,
says Lawrence.
“I have four
active formal TC applications for electric vertical-lift aircraft right now
that are going to be the urban air mobility aircraft of the future,” he told
the ATCA symposium. “These aren’t concepts; these are full-up active type
certification projects. And I expect to be issuing a type certificate to one of
these aircraft prior to 2022.”
The branch
is also processing multiple applications for supplemental type certificates
(STC) to modify existing aircraft with automated flight decks, “literally
putting robots in the seats and taking the crews away, particularly for cargo
operations,” said Lawrence. “Those are active STC applications, mostly for
study right now, but they are coming our way.”
The FAA’s
Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) had licensed 32 commercial
space launches as of mid-September and expected to authorize as many as four
more during the fiscal year, setting a new record.
The space
office supported as many launches in August as it did in 2010-11 combined,
notes Wayne Monteith, FAA associate administrator for commercial space
transportation. “Even with a global health emergency, AST is still looking at
our busiest year ever, and we’re gearing up to provide 50, 75, 100 operations a
year in the near future,” Monteith told a virtual meeting of the Commercial
Space Transportation Advisory Committee.
While
commercial space activity has ramped up, the FAA had not activated the space
data integrator (SDI), a system that feeds telemetry data from rockets as they
transition through the airspace into the agency’s traffic flow management
system. Years in development, the SDI will help reduce the amount of time and
airspace the FAA fences off during launches. Slated to enter service in August,
the system has been delayed because of restrictions imposed during the
pandemic.
The lapse in
traditional air traffic movements has not made AST’s job any easier, FAA Deputy
Administrator Dan Elwell informed the ATCA symposium.
“The SDI is
not up and running yet,” Elwell acknowledged. “The launches haven’t been made
easier because we give out launch licenses and the work of giving out a launch
license has not changed. We have been able to refine the [launch] window more
dynamically and that’s been a collaborative effort between the operator and the
FAA. We have gotten much better both at the airspace we protect and how long
the period of time the window is open.”
In March,
the FAA released Version 2 of its UAS Traffic Management (UTM) concept of
operations. The Version 2 document describes a framework for managing drone
traffic up to 400 ft. above ground level, but also addresses increasingly
complex operations traversing Class G uncontrolled airspace and other classes
of controlled airspace.
The product
of a concept originated by NASA in 2013, UTM is founded on a cloud service
infrastructure supported by third-party UAS Service Suppliers, acting under the
FAA’s regulatory authority, to cooperatively manage low-altitude drone flights
through networked information exchanges.
The UTM
construct is being validated by the FAA in a second round of field
demonstrations. In April, the agency selected the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic
Aviation Partnership in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Griffiss International Airport
in Rome, New York, to test the provision of drone traffic management services
under its UTM Pilot Program Phase 2 effort. Data collected during the exercise
“will help inform a cross-agency UTM Implementation Plan,” the FAA says.
The ATM
units of Boeing and Airbus have produced a joint vision of a single, integrated
airspace management system extending up from the ground and encompassing all
airspace users. They briefed ICAO’s Air Navigation Commission on the vision in
mid-June, in a presentation called “A New Digital Era for Aviation.”
The
manufacturers anticipate the merger of UTM and ATM, a convergence that weaves
together airspace realms using automation, digitalization and connectivity as
common threads. Those technology pillars underpinning UTM will migrate into an
airspace system that still relies in large part on human monitoring and
intervention and radio-based communications between pilots and controllers.
“In order to
make sure that we can integrate different types of vehicles—not only for small
drones, not only for the lower part of the airspace—we see UTM as a huge
opportunity,” says Isabel del Pozo de Poza, Airbus vice president and head of
UTM.
“It’s
explicitly the ambition that we share with Boeing, to develop vehicles that can
be globally integrated and serve the purpose of the end users,” adds del Pozo
in an ICAO video interview. “This needs to be managed in an interoperable way
according to global standards and global ways of understanding traffic
management. It goes hand in hand with the development of the vehicle.”
Boeing,
explaining the joint presentation in a statement to Aviation Week, said: “The
aim is to engage all aviation stakeholders by sharing future expectations for
airspace and traffic management that will safely accommodate new vehicle
operations with existing aircraft. In particular, the ATM system will need to
continue to adapt to enable near-term operations, as well as supporting
longer-term industry growth and innovation.”
In May, the
FAA released a Version 1 concept of operations (conops) for Upper Class E
Traffic Management (ETM) of air vehicles operating above 60,000 ft. The
document arose from tabletop exercises that NASA’s Ames Research Center hosted
with the FAA and aerospace companies in April and December 2019 to gain an
understanding of planned flight operations at those lesser-traveled altitudes.
Industry
participants in the exercises were Aerion Corp., developer of the AS2
supersonic business jet; Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the RQ-4 Global Hawk
high-altitude, long-endurance UAS; Loon, the Alphabet subsidiary advancing
high-altitude balloons; Sceye, developer of stratospheric airships; and
AeroVironment, Airbus and Boeing Aurora Flight Sciences, developers of the
solar-powered, fixed-wing Hawk30, Zephyr and Odysseus HAPS aircraft,
respectively.
There are
currently no airspace management provisions specific to civil aircraft
operations at that level, the FAA says. The applicable regulations are for
operations in Class E airspace at lower altitudes—generally controlled airspace
up to 18,000 ft. that is not otherwise classified.
ETM will
draw from the same UTM construct that NASA Ames conceived with small drones in
mind.
“While ETM
development leverages UTM conceptual elements where possible, its cooperative
separation environment is modified to support characteristics unique to the
airspace—long duration, multinational flights, extreme deltas between vehicle
speeds and performance characteristics and high-altitude safety risks, among
others,” the conops document states.
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