This thesis addresses the possibility of using a delay-on-ground concept in which flights with less than 1 hour flying time (often referred to as pop-up flights) absorb their arrival sequencing delay at the departure gate by being issued their Arrival Manager (AMAN)-scheduled time as a Required Time of Arrival (RTA) that is inserted into the Flight Management System (FMS). Due to their short duration these flights are currently often inserted into the AMAN sequence shortly before Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA) entry and thereby often need to absorb their arrival sequencing delay in the inefficient manner of airborne holding or vectoring close to the arrival airport. The literature review examines current operational procedures of AMANs and Departure Managers (DMANs), the current FMS RTA function and live trials in which the delay-on-ground concept was tested in real operations. A case study airport in Europe that has potential to benefit from the concept is identified. The performance of the delay-on-ground concept for the case study airport is then assessed by performing 180 fast-time Monte Carlo simulation runs. For each run the arrival flow to the case study airport and the departure flows from two medium-sized airports from which the pop-up flights originate are simulated. Each run represents an operational day and variations in departure/arrivals time is put into the timetables to simulate the variation in actual departure/arrival times resulting from operational factors normally encountered in day-to-day operations. An algorithm is written in Matlab to simulate an AMAN-DMAN cooperation in which pop-up flights are locked to the required departure times to meet their RTAs. It is shown that a significant reduction in airborne delay time and fuel consumption can be achieved at the case study airport by using the concept. It is also shown that it is possible to ensure that the pop-up flights depart at the required times to meet their RTAs without negatively affecting the departure sequences.

<div> <div> <div> <p>As the demand and complexity of air traffic increase, it becomes crucial to maintain the safety and efficiency of the operations in airspaces, which, however, could lead to an increased workload for Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) and delays in their decision-making processes. Although terminal airspaces are highly structured with the flight procedures such as standard terminal arrival routes and standard instrument departures, the aircraft are frequently instructed to deviate from such procedures by ATCs to accommodate given traffic situations, e.g., maintaining the separation from neighboring aircraft or taking shortcuts to meet scheduling requirements. Such deviation, called vectoring, could even increase the delays and workload of ATCs. This thesis focuses on developing a framework for trajectory pattern identification and classification that can provide ATCs, in vectored airspace, with real-time information of which possible vectoring pattern a new incoming aircraft could take so that such delays and workload could be reduced. This thesis consists of two parts, trajectory pattern identification and trajectory pattern classification. </p> <p>In the first part, a framework for trajectory pattern identification is proposed based on agglomerative hierarchical clustering, with dynamic time warping and squared Euclidean distance as the dissimilarity measure between trajectories. Binary trees with fixes that are provided in the aeronautical information publication data are proposed in order to catego- rize the trajectory patterns. In the second part, multiple recurrent neural network based binary classification models are trained and utilized at the nodes of the binary trees to compute the possible fixes an incoming aircraft could take. The trajectory pattern identifi- cation framework and the classification models are illustrated with the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast data that were recorded between January and December 2019 in In- cheon international airport, South Korea . </p> </div> </div> </div>

The purpose of our thesis is to investigate the incentive mechanisms that may be used for a timely and successful implementation of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects. This purpose is achieved by investigating challenges and success factors within one of the largest Public-Private Partnership projects in Europe, the SESAR programme which stands for Single European Sky ATM Research and that aims at modernising the European air traffic management (ATM) system. The categories of SESAR actors that we investigated include: stakeholders (airspace users such as Air France, KLM, SAS; ANSPs from Sweden,Finland, Netherlands and the CANSO organisation; airport representatives including Swedavia, Zürich Airport and Guernsey Airport); as well as manufacturers (e.g. Airbus, Frequentis, Thales); international organisations as principals (e.g. European Commission – SESAR Joint Undertaking-, EUROCONTROL) and advisers (e.g. Helios UK). Referring to our contribution to the theory, we identify four categories of incentive mechanisms for timely implementation of large PPP projects: i. Financial incentives such as loans, proportionate with the level of risks the implementer bears; the deduction of loan fees or reduction of service charges can motivate stakeholders to implement earlier, once they identify a positive business case. ii. Operational incentives can refer to certain preferential treatment to those who comply and detrimental treatment to those who do not comply. iii. Legal incentives such as mandates can force commitment and have an impact on the timely implementation of PPP projects within a certain time-frame. iv. Intangible incentives, such as transparent communication, collaboration and less political behaviour, are seen as major factors contributing to the commitment and trust level among the actors involved, thus, enabling the success of the PPP project implementation.

The Multiple Remote Tower Center concept (mRTC) is a cutting edge project which allows one air traffic control officer (ATCO) to be in charge of multiple remotely situated airports simultaneously. When implemented, it will revolutionise how air traffic is managed at smaller airports and allow for increased efficiency and decreased operational costs. Consequently, at the time of writing a lot of effort is going into evaluating this new way of air traffic management from a safety perspective. Air traffic management has been defined as an issue maintaining situational awareness and exercising control. This thesis aims to investigate how the phenomenon target fascination affects the ATCOs ability to exercise control over its controlled airspace and maintain its situation awareness. It does so by creating a baseline scenario of work in a mRTC, and then comparing the ATCOs performance in the baseline scenario with its performance in the same corresponding scenario, but with elements of target fascination introduced. The differences in the scenarios are analysed using the Contextual Control Model, the Extended Control Model and a holistic framework for studying situation awareness. The analysis shows that target fascination does affect the ATCOs ability to maintain control, but not radically so, and only for a short period of time. The target fascination forces the ATCO to rely on information in the immediate environment to a higher degree than during regular work, as opposed to making decisions based on a holistic understanding of the situation and high level goals. However, once the understanding of the situation have been re-established, the level of control quickly returns to normal levels. Situation awareness is thus a key concept in maintaining control. The situation awareness analysis show that target fascination affects situation awareness by causing the ATCOs understanding of the situation to become outdated without the ATCOs knowledge. Because of this, there may be developments in the situation that the ATCO is not aware of, which hinders it from acting as it normally would. In some cases an intervention from an external actor or element may be necessary to break the fascination and re-establish the ATCOs understanding for the situation. As soon as the fascination is broken, the ATCO quickly takes steps to re-establish its situation awareness and return to normal operations.