Flexible ATCO Endorsement and LDACS Complement

The overall objective of PJ.33 is to increase (cost) efficiency of air traffic management (ATM) in two different ways:

• On one hand, the goal is to increase air traffic control (ATC) capacity by investigating and validating technical and procedural means based on the previous work done in PJ.10, enabling the re-organization of the endorsement of air traffic controllers working in lower and upper area control service (explicitly excluding approach control service), which will also lead to a reduction in personnel costs and an increase in ATC cost efficiency. This will be achieved by introducing new endorsement rules which are more based on traffic complexity, sector classes and the level of skills, experience and training a controller has received on a specific class of working environment and supporting system.
• On the other hand, the efficiency of air-ground communication will be increased (e.g. maximum information throughput per minute) by investigating the technical enabler to broadly introduce the voice capability supported by L-Band Digital Aeronautical Communication System (LDACS) with the ultimate goal to replace analogue voice communication. Furthermore, the future air-ground terrestrial datalink (LDACS) will increase connectivity between air and ground that is essentially to support the future concepts, according to the Master Plan principles of service-orientation and scalability, and it will support also the resilience of aircraft navigation.