Limited Delegation of Separation Assurance to the Flight Crew: Principles and Benefits

Enhancing air traffic capacity while providing safety improvements constitutes the major challenge facing Air Traffic Management (ATM). However, the growth forecasts for air traffic in Europe and in the United States over the next fifteen years suggest that solely improving the ground component of ATM might not be sufficient to achieve the required capacity at appropriate safety levels. The development of a close co-operation between ground and airborne sides might be required to achieve this challenge. The Evolutionary Air-ground Co-operative ATM Concepts (EACAC) study of the Freer Flight project is investigating the delegation by the controller to the pilot, of some tasks related to separation assurance [5][6]. Starting from the analogy of visual clearances, EACAC is investigating the possibility of giving electronic clearances both in en-route airspace and in terminal areas. It takes advantage of emerging CNS/ATM technologies in pre-operational state – ADS-B or TIS-B [3] – along with additional avionics such as a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI) [4] or an Airborne Separation Assurance System (ASAS). EACAC targets near term applications – typically 2005 – taking place in current ATC organisations, while at the same time proposing long-term developments. This principle goes in line with th