Using Likelihood Alert Technology in Cockpit Displays of Traffic Information to Support Free Flight

The future of air traffic control imposes two major challenges. On the one hand, the increase in air traffic flow will dramatically augment the already existing high levels of workload for air traffic controllers. As a result, this increase in traffic density may jeopardize flight safety. On the other hand, standard aircraft separation tactics commanded by air traffic controllers are neither optimally efficient nor cost effective. Consequently, this makes it difficult for airlines to maintain an economic advantage. A potential solution to these problems is the introduction of free flight. The main goal of free flight is to reduce the level of workload of air traffic controllers and increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of aircraft separation by allowing pilots to make their own deviation decisions. However, the safe and efficient implementation of free flight will require state of the art cockpit displays of traffic information (CDTI) as well as advanced decision support tools (DSTs), which will need to be coupled with effective alerting algorithms. The purpose of this paper is to suggest the implementation of likelihood alert technology in CDTI, which may lead pilots to make more accurate decisions by allowing them to distinguish which conflicts are more likely to occur