ERAT - Environmentally Responsible Air Transport
Overview
Background & policy context:
For many European airports, the environmental aspect in their activities plays an important role. Various aviation stakeholders consider the environment as one of the key performance areas for their operations. In addition, the national authorities have imposed stringent environmental regulations to protect citizens living near airports and therefore the aviation stakeholders must innovate in order to grow within given constraints.
Innovations in air transport can be categorised in aeronautics (directly related to the aircraft, such as airframe structures, aerodynamics and engines) and air traffic management (ATM). The latter is comprised of advanced (operational) concepts and/or enabling technologies in the fields of communications, navigations and surveillance (often referred to as CNS) to safely manage air traffic flows efficiently in terms of time, costs and environmental aspects.
Objectives:
Environmentally Responsible Air Transport (ERAT) is a research project that addressed the Air Traffic Management (ATM) community's need to reduce the environmental impact per flight to allow for sustainable growth.
The objective of project ERAT was to develop and validate Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for the extended terminal airspace of a medium and a high density traffic airport, in such a way that the environmental impact of air traffic in 2015 should be significantly reduced while maintaining safety levels and airport and airspace capacity. The concepts were directly related to the concept work from SESAR members in ERAT, which they would undertake in the SESAR work programme.
Project ERAT focused on more efficient and environmentally friendly operations in the extended terminal airspace by facilitating more Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA) and Continuous Climb Departures (CCD).
The validation activities focused on the effects on the environment, safety, capacity and human factors. For both concepts, real-time simulation exercises were planned and performed to assess the aforementioned benefits and impacts. The objective of the validation plans was to bring it as close to the target operational environment as possible, supporting the ultimate goal to deploy the concept of operations.
Methodology:
The ERAT project aimed to identify operational initiatives, develop concept elements, integrate them and validate a concept of operations that reduced the environmental impact of air transport operation in all phases of flight in the (extended) terminal area.
At very high level, the phases required to undertake the development of an operational concept for air traffic management could be summarised as:
- Inventory of concept elements
- Define validation plan
- Define Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
- Summarise findings
The ERAT consortium has worked out these phases towards following stepwise approach:
- Identifying operational initiatives and develop concept elements with the potential to reduce the environmental impact.
- Selecting the operational concept elements to be included in the CONOPSs.
- Embedding those concept elements within CONOPSs for the terminal airspace of two airports (one with medium density and one with high density traffic, respectively Arlanda and Heathrow airport) based on the SESAR CONOPS.
- Develop a validation strategy and validation plans for the concepts at both airports.
- Undertake validation activities of the CONOPSs (e.g. with Real Time Simulation sessions).
- Assess quantified benefits of the concept of operations in terms of environmental impact, safety and capacity.
- Continue with validation and verification activities focused on preparing for live trials and deployment orientation.
It was decided at the beginning of the project that Stockholm Arlanda and London Heathrow were the centre points of the developed concepts - Arlanda (ARN) being representative as a medium traffic density airport and Heathrow (LHR) being representative for a high traffic density airport.
The important elements of the Concept for Arlanda included:
- Arrival Manager (AMAN) development;
- Controlled Time of Arrival (CTA) point and accuracy;
- Development of a Human Machine Interface (HMI) to better support controllers;
- Parallel routes;
- Procedure for short-haul traffic.
The ERAT Concepts of Operations for London Heathrow aimed to deliver benefits to both arrival and departure traffic into and out of London Heathrow. The latest concept was the innovative ERAT LHR concept, based on:
- High level airborne holding;
- Precision navigation approach transit
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