6 States Real Time Simulations

Between November 2002 and January 2003, two real-time simulations were successfully conducted at the Experimental Centre to study airspace changes in the northern core area of Europe.

EAST simulation 11–29 November 2002: evaluated the impact of several airspace modifications on sector throughput, with the aim of developing and testing the most suitable airspace structure interface considering the given extended “LAUTER TRA”.

The new airspace structure was a heavily modified version of the existing sectorisation and route network that included new arrival/departure and overflight routes defined to allow passage around the new LAUTER TRA. The main airports involved were Brussels, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Luxembourg. Weekend routes were also established to allow civil use of unutilised military airspace in accordance with the EUROCONTROL Flexible Use of Airspace concept.

WEST simulation 20–31 January 2003: determined the potential ATM benefits within the western 6 States interface by reorganising the Maastricht/United Kingdom interface. This involved testing the current two West sectors in a geographical layout and then testing the same airspace with a three- sector configuration.

This project was performed in co-operation with the London Area Control Centre (LACC) who simulated their concerned portion of airspace at the Air Traffic Management Development Centre (ATMDC)-Hurn (UK) in December 2002.

Participants

The following experts were involved in the EEC simulations.

3 from EUROCONTROL headquarters

11 from EEC

14 from Maastricht UAC

10 from Brussels ACC

6 from Frankfurt ACC

5 from Karlsruhe ACC

3 from Dusseldorf ACC

7 from Reims ACC

3 from London ACC

2 from Amsterdam ACC

1 from the Belgian Air Force

1 from the German Air Force

Military involvement

Military representatives were also present during the simulation preparation meetings. However, as it was not possible to accurately simulate military flight profiles, no military sectors were simulated at the EEC, instead experts from the Belgian and German Air Forces participated as observers and were an essential part of the project.

Results

During the East Simulation, several major issues regarding ATC procedures and sectorisation were identified and successfully resolved, whilst some issues remain under investigation (including integration of Military traffic and procedures). Very busy traffic samples indicated that the Maastricht LUX/LNO sectors would be very constrained due to the sectorisation and procedures and this could have an effect on their capacity.

Belgocontrol (Belgium) and Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) were confident that the new airspace will not affect their current capacity and in some sectors, an improvement is foreseen.

The West Simulation showed that the airspace could be configured in a two-sector geographical layout as compared to the current arrangement of two vertically split sectors. This configuration also showed the potential to support a slight increase in the current declared sector capacity. A three – layer, vertically split organisation was tested and rejected by the controllers due to high internal co ordination. However, the controllers did feel that it would be possible to increase the capacity with an extra upper sector above the two geographical sectors.

Conclusions

As a result of continuous development and improvement during the simulation, two new scenarios evolved that will be able to accommodate the proposed LAUTER TRA.

When globally compared to the current airspace, the new scenarios show no major impact on sector throughput and Air Traffic Management, and many ACCs believe they have improved their current situation.

The introduction of the new LAUTER TRA and associated airspace environment is planned for November 2003. The 6SWG has already commenced the implementation process using the new scenarios as a basis.

The EEC Report, Number 382, “6 States East and West Real-Time Simulations” is now available.

This article concludes the 6 STATES article which appeared in the November 2002 Newsletter.