Air Traffic Management

The future of ATC seems that will be governed by:

• More flexibility
• Less tactical interventions
• Equivalent complexity

I explain:

More flexibility:

Airspace blocks should be built around functional requirements [i.e traffic flows] and not around state boundariesAt a lower level, sectors need to be designed to best accommodate the main traffic flows.  Modern systems will be able to allow for dynamic re-sectorisations once these traffic flows change.

Air routes as we know them are a dying breed, and the future flights will fly through a contracted trajectory which will be an agreement between those who want to fly and those providing ATC service on the best compromise between a direct flight and airspace constraints. Instead of flying through routes, aircraft will fly through ‘air gates’ which will be opened and closed depending on need and on constraints [e.g. military activity]

This means that the sector in which a controller works can change size and shape several times a day.  Gates can be closed and re-opened at different occasions.  Changing traffic flows within a given piece of airspace will mean changes in conflict areas and scanning routines.

The controller’s job will become a more flexible endeavour.

Less tactical interventions:

Currently, one of the biggest funnels in ATM capacity [even though it is way behind the big number 1: airport handling capacity] is the amount of tactical interventions an executive controller can safely handle at one given moment.

With greater automation and improved flight prediction systems, the idea is to push the majority of today’s interventions by a number of minutes.  MTCD and other future looking systems will enable planners, at multi sector level to resolve conflicts at a very early stage.  The turn left 10 degrees by the area executive controller or the descent to FLXXX due to crossing traffic clearance should be come rarer. The majority of these interventions, in the future ATM system, would have been identified and acted upon at an earlier stage.  The result is two fold: The interventions on flights will be less abrupt [the earlier the intervention the lower the change necessary to solve a problem] and the interventions which will be left to the executive controller will be less on a similar traffic sample to that of today.  The idea is that then the sector capacity will be increased…

This brings us to the third point:

Equivalent complexity [from a controller's view point]:

A new breed of automated systems, both airborne and ground based, will be able to take over some of today’s controller’s responsibilities.  Taking today’s traffic samples, the automated systems of tomorrow would render the situation less complex.

However the situation of tomorrow will not be that of today.  The traffic is predicted to continue to increase at a steady rate [and has anyone yet seriously thought of the possible implications VLJs might have on the ATM system?] and the industry is making tremendous efforts to improve its services in terms of efficiency to the airspace user – this the flexibility demand that I described under the first point.

The conclusion on complexity is that today, in many busy European airspaces we have reached the complexity limits that a human can safely handle.  The new generation of systems will only allow us to handle more aircraft more flexibly at the same level of complexity [for the controller - the technological complexity, will of course continue to increase].  For the controller, the system cannot become more complex but will never get less complex neither.

So what about the future breed of controllers?

The future breed of controllers will be of flesh and blood and will still be highly needed.  However, the nature of their work will undergo considerable changes.

Because of the frequent changes in airspace configuration, the key will probably not be to learn the patterns [e.g. conflict areas, levels, etc] but more learn to identify the patterns which would lead to conflicts.

The rate of change of things will make it that the successful controller will not be the one who has learnt well to do his job, but the one who has learnt to keep learning well every time [and it will be often] changes happen.

The controller’s work will be less linear, e.g. clearance readback, clearance readback etc, but will be more based on multi tasking, e.g. sending a number of clearances and then monitoring their execution in parallel.

Controllers’ will probably have less tactical manoeuvres to clear than today – or maybe the equivalent of today’s but with double the traffic, but they will have a lot of more work to do at a pre-tactical level, that is identifying potential problems on a 20 minute horizon and solving them, while taking into account an array of items which could take place in those 20 minutes.

Finally, with improved information management, and with the increase in collaborative decision making, controllers will have to learn to include others while taking decisions. Needless to say that they will be given the right tools and the right training to enable them to do so.

Having said this on an ATM training blog, what will be the implications of these changes on future recruitment and training of controllers?

And with the increased dependence and complexity of ATM systems what are the implications on ATSEPs, their responsibilities, their recruitment and training?

What do you think?  Send me some comments…Â

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My colleagues are developing a game which will teach student air traffic controllers to appreciate bearings and distances while having fun.  What a great idea.  Even better they intend to make an abstraction of the skills necessary to perform the tasks, take them out of the immediate context of air traffic control, and place them in another environment.  In this way, the students will feel like they are doing something else whilst in fact they are learning.

When would you think you would remember a lesson better, when the meaning is abstracted and told in a fable in the Esopic style or when you are told bluntly: You should do this or that?

Stories are being used extensively to teach young and adults alike, and air traffic management is no exception to this.  We already prefer to illustrate learning objectives by telling stories, especially in the context of refresher training where the audience is experienced and can easily relate with the stories told.  The results are impressive.  Those using this technique usually get feedback such as: “Me too I have had a similar experience”;  Every learner knows that when a student tells him this, they have hit goal!  Needless to say, those not using this technique are strongly encouraged to do so.

Now back to games.

Similar to stories, games have the ability of giving a context to the objectives to be learned [skill, knowledge or attitude based].  In addition the context can be different to the working one and thus in a number of situations can be perceived by the student as alternative, fresh and fun.

Games also have the ability of including elements such as competition in an environment where its serious counterpart [real life] should not be.  A game which has nothing to do with air traffic control but which teaches bearing and distance appreciation could be competitive, for example having a car riding through a track and arriving first to destination can easily be competitive, whilst giving headings to aircraft to maintain separation is too near to reality and probably should not be perceived as a competitive endeavor.

Outside ATC and into the broader ATM environment, games could also be used to teach how to deal with new situations.  Imagine a future supervisor having to deal with his staff, the operational environment and his management in a ‘Sims’ way, or a future safety manager having to provide related services in a different environment than air traffic management – maybe for example within a formula 1 team!

To conclude, both games and stories have high training potential.  We just need to be creative to be able abstract what we want to teach from its immediate context, put it into an alternative one, and create an environment which naturally motivates the student to listen or to play!Â

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Web 2.0 is the term in use to describe the new generation of internet based services which emphasise collaboration and sharing between users.

In the same strain, Learning 2.0 refers to a new way of seeing learning where “The learner is no longer viewed as a “recepticle” for knowledge but rather a participant in the creation and/or discovery of what is to be learned. The learner’s role is to contribute their knowledge and (more importantly) experience to the learning environment….”

So what about learning 2.0 in ATM Training?

Well, in some areas, especially when it comes to refresher training, for example, many have been advocating for a long while that the accent should be put on facilitating the discussion between professional learner on the subjects they master because between them they can basically teach each other.

But I think we can use this notion also in other areas of training:  Different subjects in ATM, be it AB-Initio ATC CCC training, safety regulation training, CNS training or other, all could be taught using this philosophy.  We teachers / instructors could design our training to entice the thirst of learning from our students.  We can make them to collaborate in order to find the knowledge, and then we could take the roles of guides and sounding boards. They, in turn, will own the learning.

In the present world where a lot of information and knowledge is available a number of clicks away on the internet [even if this might not be the case for some of the more specialised knowledge in the ATM environment], today’s learners are getting accustomed to be the masters of their own learning.  So how about mirroring the training experience we could provide them with to what they are generally used to?

To help us further, a lot of collaborative and knowledge sharing services / tools are being put at our disposal on the internet.

How about starting to use a blog [well if you are reading this you are already familiar with the tool! ] to disseminate knowledge?  Or better still why not asking the students to keep a blog of their learning experience -  this could substitute their note books – e.g. Today I learnt that…. and this could be shared with peers, which in turn increases the learning experience.

How about creating a wiki and ask the students to collaborate on a piece of work?  Is it not a good learning experience to build knowledge while collaborating with others and where the end result is a document which witnesses this knowledge-gathering and which could be used as training notes…

Well, there are a myriad of things that could be done to put the learner at the centre of the learning experience and to encourage them to actively participate into this experience and to teach each other.  Personally I find it more satisfying to push others to draw a conclusion themselves than me giving it to them on a silver plate – how about you?

This is learning 2.0 putting the learner at the centre of the experience and letting them own the learning.

By the way, if you would like to know more about  the technologies which could eventually help you in this quest, here is a link to an interesting blog where the  Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County decided to introduce its staff to learning 2.0 – check this out: http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/Â

*Post linked from Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development blog

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