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News
Philadelphia selects ITT Exelis Opsvue Symphony flight tracking and
situational awareness system
Under an agreement with Philadelphia International Airport, ITT Exelis (NYSE: XLS) is providing the airport
with its Symphony OpsVue flight tracking and situational awareness system. Symphony OpsVue offers a
real-time view of airway and airport activity, which allows for safer, more efficient operations.
Providing flexible data visualization options, the system incorporates the most comprehensive aircraft
surveillance data available, including data from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administrations NextGen
surveillance system, which Exelis is installing, operating and maintaining nationwide.
News
At the 6th Aviation & Environment Summit in Ge-
neva, Switzerland, the two entities issued a joint
technical paper outlining critical actions necessary
to achieve the industry goal of 95 to 98 percent
efficiency in air traffic management by 2050.
The capabilities of todays high-technology
airplanes are underutilized in the current con-
strained and outdated ATM system, undermining
the profitability of the aviation industry, said Neil
Planzer, vice president of Air Traffic Management,
Boeing Flight Services. We are fully committed to
supporting long term modernization efforts such
as SESAR and NextGen without losing sight of
improvements we can make today.
The Boeing and CANSO publication is available for
download at http://www.canso.org/
Saab Sensis to Adapt Prototype NASA NextGen Surface Traffic
Management Tools for Investigations of Capacity-Constrained Airports
SESAR answers to business needs
SESAR research of night glide flights successfully completed
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News
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has selected Saab
Sensis Corporation, a subsidiary of defense and security company Saab, for the
NASA Research Announcement (NRA) Adaptation of a Surface Management Tool to
Multiple, Capacity-Constrained Airports.
Under the NRA, Saab Sensis will identify three current-day capacity-constrained
airports and create realistic departure scheduling schemes for those airports to be
tested within NASAs Surface Operations Simulator and Scheduler (SOSS). Through
the research, Saab Sensis will n(trials to further determine their ability to enhance
airport capacity through improved sequencing and scheduling.
Almost three years after the technical start of the SESAR programme, the SESAR Joint Undertaking together
with key personnel from the member organisations realigned the strategic focus of the development work.
The aim of the consultation group was to ensure that the priorities of the programme answer directly to the
needs of the ATM industry. Consequently, five operational priority areas were defined:
Airport integration and throughput;Conflict management and automation; Moving from airspace to 4D
trajectory management; Network collaborative management and dynamic/capacity balancing;
Traffic synchronization.
A consortium including the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) KLM airlines and Air Traffic Control the
Netherlands (LVNL) has successfully completed a test campaign for the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU).
This so-called AIRE project involved testing a system that allows more Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA),
or glide flights, to be uninterruptedly performed during peak hours of the night. The project team was sup-
ported by Delta Airlines, MUAC and NATS.
The AIRE project research team worked on developing a method that would allow aircraft to land accord-
ing to tighter schedules, and thus also allow CDAs to be regularly scheduled – also during busy, peak hours.
This is possible if the aircraft is controlled in a very early stage of the flight (60-90 minutes prior to landing).
In order to devise an optimal schedule, the planning system communicates with the aircraft via a data link,
requesting data from the aircraft’s flight computer. Based on this data, an optimal schedule is devised, which
gives the aircraft a high probability of flying an undisturbed CDA.
Boeing and CANSO Call to
Accelerate Air Traffic Management
Improvements
Future SESAR Releases and validation exercises will be linked to these priority
areas. The findings of the group were endorsed by all SESAR members through
its highest technical committee. “Through our industry members we are
constantly reminded of what the ATM community needs. We take these needs
seriously and translate them into concrete actions”, says Patrick Ky, Executive
Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.