Airports are very busy places where the various stakeholders have key roles and a common goal : safely and efficiently manage the flow of departing and arriving flights.

With an anticipation of 3 hours, the airport collaborative decision-making (A-CDM) process allows all stakeholders to benefit as soon as possible from the same shared information in order to make informed decisions. Milestones and relevant flight details are updated and shared in order to have precise block departure times (OBT) and take-off times (TOT) for better situational awareness. This information sharing leads to better management of traffic flows at the level of the European Eurocontrol NM network.

This objective is reflected in the light version of the A-CDM (A-CDM Light or Advanced ATC Tower) by a need for communication between all the actors of the airport, the partners but also the NM network, information on the departure flights, includes:

• A reliable take-off estimate (TTOT)
• An updated departure circuit information (SID)

The target time for the block start and the reliability of the take-off time

The TOBT (Target Off-Block Time) is the target time defined as the block departure time by the airline or the airport assistant. At this time, the following milestones must be achieved:

• the doors of the plane are closed;
• the boarding bridge is disconnected from the device;
• pushback vehicle is available;
• the aircraft is ready to start / push back upon authorization by the air traffic controller.

The TOBT and its subsequent updates is key to improving predictability during the aircraft rotation process.

In particular, it contributes to better allocation of parking lot resources thanks to knowledge of parking lot occupancy time and the accuracy of aircraft parking allocation.

It also contributes to better management of the workload of air traffic controllers who can anticipate the number of flights using the platform simultaneously.

Elle contribue aussi à une meilleure gestion de la charge de travail des contrôleurs aériens qui peuvent anticiper le nombre de vols utilisant la plateforme simultanément.

Finally, thanks to variable taxi times (VTT), a better forecast of take-off times (TTOT) can be communicated to the network manager’s operations center.

In order to provide reliable take-off time to partners as well as to the network, the objective block departure time (TOBT) is essential, in association with the estimated taxi time.

TOBT cycle life

The TOBT is declared manually by the airline company or ground handling team in charge of the flight. It is observed that the TOBT is updated very late (i.e. shortly before the current TOBT). This is due to various reasons among which:

• Airport ground assistants are focused on preparing the aircraft to perform the pushback on time, rather than communicating reliable time to other participants.
• The parking fees are proportional to the time the stand is occupied, the job of the handlers is therefore to try to minimize this time (it should be noted that in some cases the airport assistants receive penalties when the delay can be attributed to them).
• Ground assistants do not want to lose their place in the departure sequence, which would result in a longer delay (when TOBT changes, certain rules are applied by air traffic control, which may result in the flight being removed from the departure sequence and its reprogramming in this sequence later).

Certain events are beyond the control of the ground assistants, and they have no control over them (boarding longer than usual, no-show of passengers, etc.).

Therefore, TOBTs are only updated when the issue is confirmed and no other option is possible, meaning that updates occur very late in the flight lifecycle.

This is a sore point in the A-CDM information sharing objective.

To overcome these operational constraints, it then becomes crucial to be able to predict the TOBTs that will be issued in order to anticipate future updates of the TOBT and thus allow all stakeholders to react more effectively to these schedule changes. . We will call the block start time prediction the POBT (Predicted Off-Block Time) in the rest of this article.

Simplified monitoring of the target time for block departure thanks to AirportKeeper

AirportKeeper is based on an approach using the different milestones of the aircraft operating their rotations on the airports using the solution in order to calculate a POBT for each departing flight.

This POBT is then compared to the target starting time of the block communicated by the station assistants (TOBT) in order to allow anomaly detection and an associated alert lifting named TOBT_UPDATE in AirportKeeper.

Thanks to this monitoring of the communicated objective block departure times, AirportKeeper makes it possible to alert on non-updated TOBTs and therefore to facilitate and make their updates generally more reliable.

This support for operations in the tactical phase thus enables the obtaining of A-CDM Light (Advanced ATC Tower) certification in the airports where it is deployed and where the reliability and stability of the TOBT transmitted to the network is essential.

Airports are very busy places where the various stakeholders have key roles and a common goal: safely and efficiently manage the flow of departing and arriving flights.

With an anticipation of 3 hours, the airport collaborative decision-making (A-CDM) process allows all stakeholders to benefit as soon as possible from the same shared information in order to make informed decisions. Milestones and flight information are updated and shared in order to have precise block departure times (OBT) and take-off times (TOT) for better anticipation of the situation. This information sharing leads to better management of traffic flows at the level of the European Eurocontrol NM network.

Avec une anticipation de 3 heures, le processus de prise de décision collaborative aéroportuaire (A-CDM) permet à toutes les parties prenantes de bénéficier le plus tôt possible du partage des mêmes informations afin de prendre des décisions éclairées. Les jalons et les détails de vol pertinents sont mis à jour et partagés afin d’avoir des heures de départ bloc (OBT) et des heures de décollage (TOT) précises pour une meilleure connaissance de la situation. Ce partage d’informations conduit à une meilleure gestion des flux de trafic au niveau du réseau européen Eurocontrol NM. 

In the light version of A-CDM (A-CDMLight or Advanced ATC Tower), this translates into a need for internal communication from the airport, to partners but also to the network, departure information, includes:

• A reliable take-off time estimate (TTOT).
• Reliable departure procedure information (SID) ;

This information sharing leads to better management of traffic flows at the level of the ATFM network.

The taxiing time and the reliability of the take-off time

Taxi time is the time spent by an aircraft between the runway and the parking lot.

For a departing flight, Taxi-Out Time (EXOT) is the time spent between parking P and the take-off point on runway D.

For an arriving flight, Taxi-In Time (EXIT) is the time spent taxiing from landing point A on the arrival runway to parking P.

In a classic management of the departure flow, for regional airports, the Taxi-Out Time is an important and sometimes very variable part of the take-off time estimate. In fact, on the airport side, a set of operations (cleaning, carrying snacks and lunches, boarding passengers, etc.) must be carried out for an aircraft to be ready for departure. This time when the aircraft is estimated to be ready for departure (TOBT) is associated with the Taxi-Out Time (EXOT) in order to estimate the target take-off time (TTOT).

This clearly illustrates that, in order to provide a reliable take-off time to partners as well as to the network, the estimation of the taxiing time is essential, in addition to the communication of an objective block departure time (TOBT) by airport assistants.

Classic method of estimating the driving time (MTB)

Variable Ride Time (MTB) is a table-based ride time estimation model where multiple inputs are combined to estimate the ride time. Commonly used input variables are:

• The runway information used by the aircraft;
• The airplane parking lot;
• The flow of the plane (departure / arrival);
• The type of the plane.

This basic model meets the need for most regional airports which have a simple taxiway topology.

It should be noted that this method can be limiting when the number of airplanes on the taxiway increases or when the airport process induces a non-linear behavior on the taxiing time. In this case more advanced algorithms, but requiring increased maintenance, can be deployed.

Simplified monitoring of the accuracy of MTB riding time estimates thanks to AirportKeeper

AirportKeeper allows dynamic construction of MTB tables on the basis of the historical realized rolling time

Once built, the accuracy and relevance of these tables are monitored by the application, and automatically warn platform administrators in the event that the configured accuracy thresholds are not met. AirportKeeper then offers help in updating these tables, in order to facilitate decision-making and guarantee optimal updating of the values, always on the basis of the historical running times achieved.

Thanks to this functionality, AirportKeeper allows a simple and reliable installation of the taxiing time tables. This feature is one of the many aids that make it easier to obtain A-CDM Light (Advanced ATC Tower) certification at airports where AirportKeeper is deployed.

For more than a decade, many European airports have successfully implemented the principles of A-CDM (Airport Collaborative Decision Making), improving the efficiency of their operations. The results of this implementation are mainly a reduction in delays for airlines and a reduction in CO2 emissions at the approaches to these airports.

Generally speaking, it has been observed that A-CDM concepts and the solutions that implement them are perceived by regional and local airport managers as too complex or even useless in view of their traffic volume. The implementation of A-CDM in airports is often identified as requiring heavy CAPEX investments and long months of organization and processes to educate, train and install the systems needed to operate it.

The unprecedented health crisis that has hit airports heavily for over a year has cut air traffic by an average of 70% compared to 2019. However, it has revealed the value of A-CDM concepts in crisis management for regional and local airports.

A shared vision of operations is at the heart of the A-CDM concept. In this unprecedented situation, limiting multiple communications, optimizing decision making, reducing the number of errors and misunderstandings and reducing costs are (survival) issues for all types of airports.

This search for savings requires reliable, centralized and standardized access to operational information through a single platform, accessible at any time and on any medium.

In addition, regional and local airports often suffer from the use of software solutions that work in silos, i.e. addressing a specific issue (requesting assistance and ground handling services, tracking flights in tactical mode, invoicing airport users, etc.), with limited connectivity and therefore generating numerous duplicate entries of information, a source of inefficiency and frustration for the operational teams.

By nature, and even more so in the current situation, the versatility of regional and local airport staff is reinforced, and any exchange and collaboration solution as advocated by the A-CDM concepts must take this specificity into account and offer the most transversal levels of service possible.

Health crisis drives change at regional airports

In the A-CDM concepts, one of the main levers improving the decision making process for any operation is the access to a tool allowing to easily exchange with the airport community beyond the organizational barriers inherent to the different companies operating on an airport (ground handling company, airlines, security company, etc.).

Even if the decrease in traffic has resulted in a decrease in these exchanges, it is no less true that inter-team communication, still too strongly based on intrusive voice exchanges and not very conducive to confidentiality, remains too often inefficient.

It is imperative to give all airport stakeholders free and unlimited access to information so that everyone can contribute at their own level to improving the common knowledge of the operations situation.

This particular situation has also revealed the need to provide the most accurate information possible, adapted to the users’ profiles. The time of the single interface where each user comes to find by himself the information that suits him to accomplish his activities is over.

It is therefore necessary to provide a highly configurable collaboration solution to cover this need for instant access to information, whether it is for a bird hazard manager or for a passenger handling agent in the terminal.

Il est donc nécessaire de fournir une solution de collaboration hautement configurable pour couvrir ce besoin d’accès instantané aux informations, que ce soit pour un responsable du péril aviaire ou pour un agent d’accueil en charge des passagers dans l’aérogare.

It is clear that airports will not be able to sustain heavy CAPEX investments to deal with this crisis. It is therefore obvious that they need to provide a digital solution based on a flexible, no-commitment subscription whose cost to the airport is proportional to its current traffic volume so as not to jeopardize the recovery before it has borne fruit.

It is in this spirit that AirportKeeper‘s solution is designed to accompany its customers on the path to A-CDM.

The introduction a few years ago by Eurocontrol of the AAT (Advanced ATC Tower) accreditation has allowed some airports to establish this privileged link with the Network Manager in order to take advantage of the benefits, while fearing the inevitable difficulty of its implementation.

Here again, with its recognized experience and expertise in this field, Innov’ATM demystifies this complexity and assists its customers at every step so that this transition to network connectivity is quick and secure.

The COVID crisis was a brutal and unexpected shock by its magnitude and duration. But, paradoxically, it is also an opportunity to initiate an in-depth digital transformation for regional and local airports which, thanks to the greater availability of their human resources and their appetite for change generated by this period of uncertainty, will be the first drivers of this evolution. 

Innov’ATM, an innovative company with the ambition to revolutionize air traffic management solutions, is working today with its AirportKeeper digital solution to simplify access to the benefits of A-CDM concepts for all regional airports.

For more than 8 years, Innov’ATM distinguishes itself as an innovator in the field of air traffic optimization and drone traffic management solutions. This company, based in Toulouse in France, employs many technical and business experts, makes the difference by its Agile approach concrete and efficiency-oriented, putting technology at the service of air transport with pragmatism.

With this in mind, Innov’ATM has decided to support regional and local airports in this period of recovery of European air traffic. This support is translated by the opening of a new platform of information sharing and collaboration for all types of airports, whatever the typology of its traffic and directly accessible on the website.

In 2020, with the health crisis related to COVID-19, airports saw their traffic severely reduced with an average drop of 70% compared to 2019. The outlook for 2021 reveals a traffic divided by two compared to the pre-crisis period.

“With the acceleration of the vaccine policy in many European countries, the recovery of air traffic should be confirmed over the next few months but will remain slow. It is therefore essential for airports to reduce their operating costs by improving the use of their resources. In this context, we want all types of airports to be able to benefit from digital solutions such as ours, which until now have been reserved for larger airports,” says Stéphane Bascobert, president and co-founder of Innov’ATM.

For Laurent Nicolas, Director of Innov’ATM’s Aircraft Transport Industry Business Unit: “Since 2016, we have been working hand in hand with our partner airports‘ operational staff in order to offer adapted and pragmatic solutions. Our agility and expertise, recognized by users, have enabled us to adjust AirportKeeper to many different use cases.”

Operational since 2019, this complete airside operations management and team collaboration solution has an ergonomic, simple, efficient and cost-effective interface.

AirportKeeper offers, on a unique platform, a real time flight tracking, gives access to information and facilitates communication, in a mobile way for all airport actors.

“Many smaller airports are not in a position to make investments to improve their information systems in these times of crisis. With AirportKeeper, we provide them with a flexible, immediately accessible and universal solution to enable better cooperation within teams, saving time and efficiency, and this without any commitment for the manager” says Audric Semezies, Innov’ATM’s sales manager.

So that airports can judge for themselves the relevance and efficiency of such a tool, AirportKeeper offers a trial period, without installation and without commitment, up to 1 month of free use of AirportKeeper features.