The pessimism of an optimist
On 21/11/2011, in Viewpoint, by cleo
Some readers of Roger-Wilco asked me why we tend to report on problems so often. The answer is simple. Because almost nobody else seems to be doing it.
If you read the official communiqués from various projects, they do tend to project a much brighter picture and if you read only those, you will sleep well. All is fine in the world of ATM. I am not saying that the official sources of information are saying things that are not true. But what they often do is leave out the context or simply ignore certain pertinent facts.
Let me give you a few recent examples.
SESAR has split its plan for implementing things into three packages, IP1 to IP3. Everyone is now raving over IP1 and the super effort going into realizing it. Great. What is rarely added is that the content of IP1 is nothing more than what should have happened under the previous European project, ATM2000+ anyway and some of the elements got delayed by 3+ years because everything stopped while the world was waiting for the SESAR miracle to happen…
A while ago the folks in the FAB Europe Central announced that airlines will be saving millions in fuel due to the more direct routes now formally agreed for night operations. What they did not add was the simple fact that most aircraft have been flying those direct routings at night for many years now on an ad hoc basis and these were now formalized. Sure, being able to plan for the shorter route brings some savings but to claim credit for the millions that were already being saved is not exactly how these things should be communicated.
SESAR has some 300 projects running… When was the last time you read in their official communications how far those projects have come and whether or not they are on schedule?
Click here to read the full article
A-CDM eLearning Modules from EUROCONTROL
On 14/11/2011, in CDM, by steve
The free eLearning modules introduce Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and the challenges involved in introducing A-CDM in practice.
The first module, “Introduction to Airport CDM” is dedicated to anyone who would like to get an overview of what Airport CDM is, and is ideally suited for Managers with limited time. Detailed modules explaining the various elements of Airport CDM dedicated to managers implementing CDM at their airport is available for everyone here, after registration.
Also for the first time this eLearning course addresses all operational staff via specific modules dedicated to each airport partner. These include modules for airport operators, aerodrome controllers, aircraft operators ground staff, pilots and ground handlers. Registration is required but otherwise the modules are available for anyone.
Interviews of operational staff were carried out at their working positions. These interviews refer to the CDM milestone processes at their airport and with examples taken out of daily tasks, demonstrate how CDM changed their working practices and helped them to become more efficient.
The A-CDM eLearning course is aimed to become a useful tool for the challenging task of communicating CDM principles and the training of operational staff, related to their specific role in a CDM environment; helping them to develop a proper understanding so as to make the required cultural changes.
EUROCONTROL cancels CDM group meeting
On 12/10/2011, in CDM, by steve
When the mail arrived announcing that EUROCONTROL was cancelling the upcoming CDM group meeting due to severe cuts in their budget, I was not really surprised. This was almost expected as part of what appears to be the killing off of EUROCONTROL. That the CDM group was one of the more successful activities was of course not enough to save the meeting.
Since the announcement, scores of posts appeared on various LinkedIn groups, most of them critical of the decision and regretting this short-sighted action. At least one commenter “reassured” us that this was the way the future will go, the stakeholders want to scale back EUROCONTROL and the ANSPs will take over the coordination of things.
In all the rightful indignation we should not forget a few additional interesting facts that all have a bearing on what is happening to EUROCONTROL to-day. Since I have been there from pretty early on, sharing the time as an ANSP rep and later as an IATA rep, I do have a peculiar perspective which I would like to share with you. Why are these facts important? Because by recognizing them we can hopefully design more effective remedies. So here goes:
1. EUROCONTROL was not perfect. BUT it had many excellent projects, truly forward looking initiatives most of which were consistently slowed down or killed by the stakeholders. I have been in many high level meetings where things got hammered for no other reason but that one or more big ANSPs were not ready to do “it”. Believe it or not, air/ground digital link work in the early phases would have been killed had we not organized a very strong protest… There are more examples.
2. There has been a wrestling match between EUROCONTROL and the EC for a long time. Things got a bit more balanced when the EC burned their fingers in the initial FAB and SES activity caused by the same reluctant stakeholders who were keeping EUROCONTROL from performing properly.
3. It is an open secret that there are certain ANSPs in Europe who have maintained for a long time that they could do a better job of ATM than EUROCONTROL does, being especially critical of the CFMU. The current financial squeeze is not the first initiative to kill EUROCONTROL (but is probably the most effective yet).
4. Giving EUROCONTROL the role of Network Manager is a smokescreen and an incredible affront to the industry. Since EUROCONTROL does not get any additional powers to make things happen (so it will be nothing like the Command Centre in the US), it will be a toothless tiger… Possibly in a few years time it will be established that EUROCONTROL is not being very effective as the Network Manager, so it can disappear completely. Clever… Click here to read the full article
The true roots of CDM?
On 11/10/2011, in CDM, by steve
We all know that the original concept of Collaborative Decision Making was born in the US… Atlanta and Philadelphia are the two airports where CDM-type cooperation was first tried and the benefits demonstrated.
However, I now suspect that the definition of CDM may in fact have been formulated a good deal earlier. Several centuries earlier…
Read this:
Does this not sound like a pretty good definition of CDM?
Well, it is something else altogether. It is Kina´ole or the Hawaiian ideal of flawlessness.
But based on this definition, we could have pretty good CDM, don´t you think? Who cares the idea is several centuries old!
Metron Aviation Wins NASA Contract for NextGen Airspace Management
On 26/08/2011, in NextGen, by steve
Metron Aviation announced that it has been awarded a contract from NASA to perform advanced research and development to further NextGen airspace management concepts. This is an interesting twist in the NextGen story… Metron Aviation has been recently acquired by Airbus.
Metron Aviation will support NASA’s NextGen Concepts and Technology Development Project (CTD), as it continues to conceptualize and create Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) concepts for allocating airspace capacity during convective weather events. Metron Aviation will develop DAC concepts and algorithms that incorporate uncertainties in weather forecasts, methods for conversion of convective weather activities into airspace capacity and uncertain pilot, airline and Traffic Flow Management (TFM) responses to weather.
“We are extremely pleased to have been awarded this prestigious NASA contract. Working consistently with NASA to dynamically change Airspace Configuration will not only show immediate results towards harmonization and NextGen, but will also impact the National Airspace for years to come,” said Robert Hoffman, PhD., Principal Analyst and Director of the Advanced Research Group at Metron Aviation. “For years, we have been working with NASA on various airspace optimization projects, and are excited to continue our heritage of innovation to create a more efficient, optimized and safer airspace.”
Click here to read the full article
Airport CDM officially launched in Madrid Barajas Airport
On 24/08/2011, in CDM, by steve
The Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) Project in Madrid-Barajas Airport (AENA) was officially launched on 26 July 2011 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the main stakeholders, AENA, AENA Aeropuertos Sociedad Anonimo and Iberia. The signing ceremony took place at Madrid-Barajas Airport Headquarters and was hosted by the AENA Aeropuertos Sociedad.
The signing of the MoU confirms the commitment of the partners at Madrid-Barajas Airport and will lead the way for wider implementation at other Spanish Airports. The benefits to the airport partners are significant both at local and network level as proven by other European airports who have fully implemented Airport CDM (Munich, Frankfurt, Brussels and Paris CDG).
Airport CDM aims to enhance the current decision making processes linked to the turnround process of aircraft and increases airport efficiency. It is a powerful enabler to reduce the delays in Europe by integrating airports into the ATM network.
SESAR has acknowledged the importance of A-CDM as an enabler to achieve the challenging SESAR/EC performance objectives.
The EUROCONTROL A-CDM Implementation team is committed to working in close cooperation with Madrid Barajas and other European airports providing support and advice to accelerate A-CDM implementation across Europe.
TITAN – a smart layer upon Airport CDM
On 17/08/2011, in TITAN, by balazs
Not so long ago, a daring fellow named Orville Wright took off from a hazy field in North Carolina with his „homebuilt” airplane. He flew an impressive distance of 39 meters, then landed. That day, the Wright Flyer made four take-offs: the Wright brothers intended to take full advantage of the good weather on their day off.
108 years later, the distances flown in public air transport grew a bit longer, but the overall target of getting the most out of the possibilities hasn’t changed. In the last decades the engineering people of the industry unquestionably did a good job: the equipment is capable of running nearly 24/7. We have got instruments that can land an airplane without any intervention of the flight crew, airport opening hours are driven by the traffic much more than by the weather, moreover, the reliability of ground and in-flight systems is increasing as quickly as their maintenance period does.
There are only two factors of the equation that have remained – and will always remain – constant, and these become the ultimate limits of air transportation capacity. These are the physical space available and the loadability of the human mind.
Space, the first constraint, cannot be outflanked, since there are only two states of a given runway, airport gate or piece of airspace in a given moment: occupied or free. However, along with the evolution of information technology, computers are continuously extending the capacity of the human brain, at least on the level of data storage and organization. In the pre-computerized era, decision making required the talent of complementing the data available with good estimations of the missing information, the aim of IT solutions is to make all relevant information available to get rid of the need for this talent.
From the late 70’s computational data management started to gain growing influence in different fields of airline and airport management. This resulted in discrete, standalone systems that were – if at all – loosely interconnected. The responsible people of the different fields of operation could not complain anymore regarding the lack of data primarily needed for decision making. But regardless of the IT efforts, the delay statistics remained proportional to nothing else but the level of traffic at the best run and equipped airports just as well as at the others without the freshest IT infrastructure.
Click here to read the full article
Pilot CDM Project to Improve Air Traffic Management Between Bangkok and Singapore
On 29/07/2011, in CDM, by steve
CANSO, the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation, has announced the launch of a pilot project which aims to improve the efficiency of air traffic management (ATM) between two major cities in the Asia-
Pacific region.
The project seeks to demonstrate the potential efficiency gains from the implementation of CDM at Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok and Changi airport in Singapore, and the integration with en-route CDM for seamless ATM operations.
Click here to read the full article
Airbus Acquires Metron Aviation
On 27/07/2011, in Just to let you know..., by steve
Airbus has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Metron Aviation, a leading provider of advanced Air Traffic Management (ATM) products and services for the global aviation industry. This acquisition strengthens Airbus’ strategy to accelerate and support ATM programs that will dramatically improve global air transportation capacity, efficiency and environmental sustainability.
The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals, and the acquisition is expected to be completed later this year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Earlier this year, Airbus launched subsidiary Airbus ProSky, dedicated to supporting the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), Europe’s Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) and other global ATM modernisation programs.
Click here to read the full article
The significance of services in TITAN
On 17/06/2011, in TITAN, by steve
As you may have heard, TITAN is an EU 7Th Framework project working on improving the predictability and efficiency of the aircraft turnaround. Its name says it all: turnaround integration in trajectory and network. Building on the baseline to be provided by Airport CDM (A-CDM), TITAN will make the details of the turnaround process more visible on a scale much wider than anything in the past. By providing context sensitive information to the various stakeholders enabling them to anticipate problems and take remedial action not only on a timely basis but also commensurate with the problem to be solved.
You can find more information on TITAN here. This article is about a very important characteristic of TITAN, namely its service oriented architecture (SOA). You can read more about SOA here, but to recap briefly, let me say that in this approach the business aspects and the IT aspects of a system are decoupled from each other, with the business aspects driving the IT aspects and not the other way round. This is a major step in the right direction already as in the past the blessings of modern IT were often negated by the limitations they placed on what the business side was able to achieve. The S in SOA stands for “service” and these are traditionally defined for the IT part of course but even more importantly, the business level also gets its set of services. Where do we get those business services from? Usually they are puzzled out from process models but this can result in an unmanageably complex result. By using domain models to deduce a “what do we actually do” model, things are much simplified and the result is actually usable.
But what does this all have to do with TITAN?
Click here to read the full article
BluSky Services and Holland Aviation Consultancy & Engineering (HACE) team up to develop advanced e-training courses
On 13/06/2011, in Training world, by steve
The importance of training in aviation cannot be over emphasized. This has been amply demonstrated by recent events, including the Air France A330 crash and the A380 taxi incident, in both of which pilot training issues have been identified as important contributory factors.
But the need for quality training extends way beyond pilots and air traffic controllers. People working on all levels and in all aviation disciplines must be able to supplement their basic training and skills with new knowledge constantly being generated in this fast moving industry.
Training is an expensive affair. The courses themselves tend to have a steep price and having people travel to the course location incurs additional expenses. Temporary absence from the workplace must also be accounted for. With company budgets under stress everywhere, managers are often forced to axe all but essential training. Of course the line between essential and nice to have is not always easy to identify and missing out on important new knowledge happens before we know it.
However, modern technology is here to help. Enter the Advanced E-training Courses being offered in air traffic management by the HACE/BluSky Services partnership. These two companies bring together several years’ worth of expertise in air traffic management and e-learning to offer a wide range of courses at a very reasonable price.
Whether you are an individual wishing to expand your horizons or a company with a need to bring its personnel up to speed on certain subjects, e-learning provides a cost-effective and convenient way to acquire the knowledge you seek. In all cases, the total cost is a fraction of what an equivalent classroom course would require in terms of time and money.
Click here to read the full article
TITAN Mid-term Progress Meeting
On 10/06/2011, in TITAN, by steve
The mid-term progress meeting of the TITAN project was held on 24-25 May 2011 near Frankfurt at project partner Jeppesen’s European headquarters. The meeting was well attended and was of special significance also on account of the fact that TITAN was introduced for the first time to its new European Commission project officer Mr. Remy Denos.
The meeting took place in the company boardroom, under the watchful eyes of near life-size portraits of Mr. Jeppesen and Mr. Sanderson, the two icons of aeronautical information mapping and management.
Having this meeting at Jeppesen was in part indicative also of the very real progress TITAN was achieving. One of the future deliverables of the project, the TITAN Tool will be created by Jeppesen with input of the project partners of course and the time is now approaching when the tool will become more than just a paper product. Much more in fact. Users of this tool will get a uniquely focused and detailed view of the aircraft ground turnaround process, enabling them to anticipate and mitigate problems that may arise and hence avoid disruptions of the turnaround. A tool that can make this happen can save airlines a lot of money while also benefiting airports and handling organizations.
Of course a lot of work remains.
Click here to read the full article
TITAN – New category on Roger-Wilco
On 26/05/2011, in TITAN, by steve
Our readers will have noted that Roger-Wilco regularly reports on developments in the field of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), a subject that has its own category on the blog.
One of the most interesting new developments in CDM is cooking in the EU 7th Framework project TITAN. Building on basic CDM, TITAN brings added value by integrating the aircraft turnaround process into the business trajectory and the ATM network.
In order to give more visibility to TITAN on Roger-Wilco, we are launching an all new category dedicated to the project under the name… well, what did you think? TITAN.
It is our hope that this TITAN space on Roger-Wilco will encourage our readers to comment, ask, explore, criticize or just read about developments in this interesting project.
Of course the official web site of TITAN will continue to be the formal repository of project related information.
IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT TITAN, SAY IT ON ROGER WILCO!
Are Brussels Airlines and Brussels Airport loosing it?
On 20/04/2011, in CDM, by steve
I have written in the past about the curious happenings that seem to affect Brussels Airlines’ flights from Vienna. You can read about them here and here. Last Friday however I got proof that flights TO Vienna can also be jinxed… Sadly, the event I am about to relate to you also shows that collaborative decision making (CDM) as practiced to-day in Brussels needs to be improved substantially.
SN runs a very convenient service to Vienna, leaving Brussels at 0705 and arriving in the Austrian capital shortly after 0830. With the new train connection at the airport you can reach most meeting locations for a comfortable 1000 start.
I was at Brussels airport early last Friday, 15 April because exceptionally I was planning to entrust my little trolley bag to the care of the “system”. As you will see, this was an exceptionally bad idea. Having checked in at home, baggage drop-off was a breeze and in no time at all I was through security and on my way up to the gate area.
Brussels Airport is one of those places where they use the totally idiotic and counter- productive idea of posting the gate numbers at the last possible moment believing that leaving passengers clueless about the gate would generate more revenue at the shops… In fact they are only “punishing” those who check in at home and who do not have bags to drop off since they will indeed not learn the gate number until the airport decides to disclose this closely guarded secret; all others get the gate number scribbled on their boarding pass by the helpful airlines (who probably hate this selfish attitude of the airports as much as I do).
This morning I was among those happy souls “in the know” and I walked straight to the gate, casting a sad eye at the group of imptient passengers milling around in front of (and NOT inside) the bar waiting for their gate to be posted. At the gate itself a sad sight greeted me. There was no aircraft at the other end of the air-bridge.
Click here to read the full article
Can I do CDM alone?
On 01/04/2011, in CDM, by steve
At a recent informal meeting somebody posed an important, and very relevant, question: Is it possible to do collaborative decision making (CDM) alone? The question may sound like a contradiction in terms at first but it is not. And the answer is both yes and no.
First of all, we must remember the First and Second Rules of CDM: “Never make decisions in isolation” and “Always share your decisions”.
Making a decision alone or in isolation are two very different things of course. Not making decisions in isolation does not imply that you must make the decision while interacting with others in real time. In actual fact at a small airport or for a small aircraft operator the CDM environment may be nothing more complicated than having easy access to standard procedures being applied at his own or at remote locations, preparing a list of acceptable options to be selected from in given situations and so on. Armed with such “support” the person making the decision may be alone but still not working in isolation.
Click here to read the full article
Successful Second Workshop Held by TITAN
On 03/03/2011, in TITAN, by steve
The 7th Framework program TITAN, dealing with optimizing the aircraft turnaround process held its second workshop on 22 February, in Madrid, Spain.
The interest in the subject was amply demonstrated by how well this event was attended at a time when it is not easy to get travel authorization in most organizations. Handling agents, airports, universities, research institutions as well as members of the TITAN team were all well represented and everybody actively contributed to the brainstorming.
The two main themes of the workshop were focusing on the definition and contents of warnings and the information flows and actors concerned.
The program uses a process based, service oriented approach in defining what TITAN will do in order to make actors aware of the progress of the turnaround at a granularity exceeding the currently planned detail and warnings play a crucial role in shaping this common situational awareness. The term “warning” is in fact a generic expression and it covers output generated for information only as well as actual alarms which in turn may be categorized as green (heads-up only, no action), yellow (action to be taken) to red (urgent action to be taken, nominal operation no longer possible). Obviously, getting the trigger events and the warning responses right is crucial for effective operation.
Click here to read the full article
Second TITAN Workshop – All are welcome!
On 08/02/2011, in TITAN, by steve
Delays in the turnaround are a major cause for low predictability in commercial aviation. The SESAR ConOps describes the paradigm shift towards trajectory based operations. Turnaround Integration into Trajectory And Network (TITAN) extends the view by proposing a concept of operations which integrates the turnaround of aircraft into trajectory and network based on Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) and System Wide Information Management (SWIM) principles. You can read more about TITAN here.
The first TITAN Workshop was held back in March 2010. It was a well attended event that defined the basis of the TITAN concept and provided a first opportunity for all stakeholders to contribute their particular points of view.
The Second TITAN Workshop will be held in Madrid, Spain on 22 February 2011.
Since the start of the project and the First Workshop, a lot of work has been completed, forming the basis of this second meeting to which all interested stakeholders are cordially invited.
Click here to read the full article
SWIM and WikiLeaks – do we need to worry?
On 05/01/2011, in SWIM, by steve
For all those who are even a little familiar with the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) concept the recent publication of thousands of classified diplomatic documents must have come as a shock. If secret diplomatic correspondence can be hijacked and made public with such ease, what hope do we have of keeping the commercially or otherwise sensitive data that will be shared in the air traffic management environment confidential? Will anyone still be willing to share their sensitive data?
To give an answer to this question, we have to examine how those secret, electronically stored documents got into the wrong hands in the first place.
For many years the United States government was being lambasted from all sides for being a dinosaur in the information age. Adoption of electronic government functions, long commonplace in countries of far lesser sophistication, were being introduced at a painfully slow rate, if at all. Significantly, the 9/11 commission report charged that computers in the various government departments could not share information and that this contributed to the terrorists being able to conduct their preparations unnoticed.
In other words, Uncle Sam was badly in need of a healthy dose of SWIM. As we know, System Wide Information Management ensures that everyone has the data they need in a timely manner and in the quality that meets their requirements. SWIM also ensures that the confidentiality of information passing through it is rigorously protected.
Click here to read the full article
Brussels – CDM airport daylight hours only??
On 13/12/2010, in CDM, by steve
Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a vital element of the new air traffic management paradigm (you can read more about CDM in Roger-Wilco’s CDM category). Some airports in Europe are leading CDM implementation, among them Brussels. One would expect that operations at a CDM airport do not have to contend any more with such basic problems as waiting at a gate with no operator for the airbridge… Arrive late in the evening at Brussels and CDM airport or not, you will be treated to this kind of legacy problem.
Last Friday though they have given us a taste of the good old times, before CDM…
SN 2908 from Vienna was not only on time for its 23.10 arrival but it was actually some 15 minutes early. Landing on 25L the plane taxied to a remote position beyond the satellite terminal (see sketch below) where Brussels Airlines parks their aircraft for their week-end rest. Passengers were happy. 15 minutes may not be such a big gain in time but getting home 15 minutes earlier on a Friday night is a nice thing for everyone.
The plane came to a halt, engines fell silent and the doors… remained closed. Five minutes later the captain announced that we were a bit early and the stairs and bus were not yet available. It was then that some passengers started to ask the age old question, the one that started CDM as a concept more than two decades ago: do they not know it when a plane arrives early?????
Click here to read the full article
The TITAN project – one year down the road
On 06/12/2010, in TITAN, by steve
I have always wondered whether passengers notice the organized chaos that characterizes aircraft at the gate, getting ready for its next trip. Whether it is a 737 operated by a low-cost carrier getting turned around in as little as 20 minutes or a 747 heading to the other side of the world and readied for departure in less than 90 minutes, the picture is much the same: a lot of machines, a lot of people, a lot of activities which magically all terminate all of a sudden as if on command and the aircraft is ready to go!
This is the turnaround process, one of the most critical phases of a flight. Yes, strange as it may sound, an aircraft on the ground being serviced for its next flight faces many organizational and technical hurdles, the handling of which introduces a degree of unpredictability seldom if ever encountered in actual flight.
Mess up the turnaround process and an immediate delay ensues which can throw the whole schedule of that particular airframe out of whack for the rest of the day. The nightmare of all airlines.
Of course what we see around the aircraft is only part of the show. Inside the terminal scores or hundreds of passengers will be streaming towards their gate and some will stop to shop, some to eat, others just to gape… in any case, their on time arrival at the gate is anything but certain. Another potential source of departure delay…
Click here to read the full article
A-CDM project launched in Vienna – about time too!
On 23/11/2010, in CDM, by steve
If you read my rants and raves (here and here) about how collaborative decision making (CDM) was not really working in Vienna, you will be surprised to hear that there is in fact a CDM team there, imaginatively called CDM@VIE and they had a kick-off event with 60 or so participants on 6 September this year. None too soon I would say.
At the kick-off event handling, stand and gate coordination, airline and terminal management, slot coordination and General Aviation were all represented. Controllers from Austro Control were there and representatives of Austrian Airlines, Fly Niki and Fraport also turned up.
EUROCONTROL presented the basics of CDM and the Vienna team introduced their project. Thereafter, 20 experts attended a two day train-the-trainer course. This is strange of course… How many people are dealing with CDM in Vienna if they need 20 trainers?
Anyway, based on recent experience, they will have their tasks cut out for them. If they succeed, with a bit of luck, we will no longer have to go through security twice within 10 minutes and mad rushes between gates will also be a thing of the past.
Do it yourself security in Vienna
On 22/11/2010, in CDM, by steve
Mind you, I do like Vienna Airport in Austria. It is a nice place which has managed to stay small in spite of becoming bigger. I also do fly from Vienna a lot and so perhaps it is unfair when I come with another story of a passenger handling hiccup… you know, big numbers and all that.
A while ago, I told you the story of SN flight 2908 and this time here is the story of SN 2906.
On arrival at the airport, I saw that the gate assigned to this flight was C31. In order to understand the circumstances, you need to know that in Terminal C of Vienna airport, they do security on a gate by gate basis. There are fair sized holding areas for each gate just off the main concourse and you access these via the well known metal detectors and X-ray machines for your hand luggage.
The main concourse in Vienna Terminal C
When I got to C31, they were processing the passengers for a flight going to Hamburg, departure time 17.35. On the monitor screen in the “Next flights” section, SN 2906 was shown with its departure time of 18.15. You needed good eyes to spot this information and clearly, passengers arriving at the gate had some trouble spotting their flight number. They were all confused by the big letters proclaiming that this was the gate for Hamburg (and also Brussels if you looked close enough…).
For me, those small letters spelled disaster. At 17.20, the last of the stray Hamburg passengers were still rushing through security and there was obviously no way for the flight to push back on time and vacate the gate for the incoming Brussels Airlines Avro RJ100. But apparently the guys allocating the gates were more optimistic than me…
Click here to read the full article
CANSO joins ACI-Europe and EUROCONTROL to accelerate A-CDM roll-out
On 13/10/2010, in CDM, by steve
The threat of climate change, the global economic crisis and the resulting changes in the structure of the European aviation market have led to a renewed focus on efficiency and performance for Europe’s airports. In October 2008, ACI EUROPE and EUROCONTROL signed a collaboration to increase operational efficiencies at European airports.
This collaboration revolves around the implementation of an innovative operating practice called Airport Collaborative Decision-Making (A-CDM) which allows airports into the Air Traffic Management network and vice versa. This gives users access to a range of operational data allowing them to make their operations more efficient.
Successful implementation of A-CDM leads to significant reduction in CO2 emissions, which in turn helps airlines save fuel.
At the 5th Annual ACI EUROPE Airport Exchange, CANSO – the global trade body for Air Traffic Management – joined this partnership, giving the initiative even more momentum.
Over the last 2 years, the A-CDM program has made great progress with more than 30 airports so far engaged in implementing it.
Click here to read the full article
The saga of Brussels Airlines flight SN 2908 continues
On 17/08/2010, in CDM, by steve
Our regular readers will remember that back in June I wrote a post about how the passengers and, apparently Vienna airport itself, was left in the dark about the comings and goings of SN 2908… Passengers were being boarded into the holding area when it was revealed that the flight would be an hour and a half late. You can read that story here.
One of my advance bookings is for the same flight in September and earlier this month Brussels Airlines sent a very nifty email informing me that the flight has been rescheduled and would now leave Vienna at 21.10 instead of the original 20.35. Since the flight was late most of the time anyway, this is nothing more than recognition of a fact of life but is a good move nevertheless. It will save a lot of frustration and aggravation, not to mention the improvement to SN’s on-time performance.
I did not get any reaction from Brussels Airlines to my original post and I would hate to appear pretentious by claiming that this rescheduling has anything to do with the article. It is probably just a coincidence… but a good one!
Surprise in Vienna – When the system really fails
On 21/06/2010, in CDM, by steve
Brussels Airlines flight SN2908 is the evening counterpart of SN2901, the red-eye Brussels-Vienna flight that takes you to that magnificent city in time for a meeting that can start as early as 10.00 and conclude as late as 18.00 since SN2908 will bring you home comfortably. The only trouble with SN2908 is that it is apparently late in nine cases out of ten… No doubt this is a flight at the end of the series of rotations assigned to the 737 performing it and ATC delays and a bit of bad weather can all conspire to make an on time run a mission impossible. I have spent quite some time and euros at the Starbucks outlet conveniently located near the gate usually assigned to 2908 waiting for her to put in an appearance.
But in all cases, we knew about the delay right on arrival at the airport and could plan our extra sojourn accordingly. But not on this Friday, 18 June when we were dished up something completely new, shaking my trust in the information management savvy of our industry.
In case you are not familiar with Vienna airport, in the terminal used by Brussels Airlines the gates have a kind of holding area which you enter through a security check done at the entrance. Each gate has its own screening equipment. The gate and the security check point is normally manned about one hour before the published boarding time.
The boarding time for SN2908 was 20.05 and so a little over 19.00 processing of passengers into the holding area began as usual. One would assume that all this activity is started on the basis of the news that the aircraft is in the air and will be landing more or less on time.
As I don’t like queues, I was one of the first through security and then planted myself near the air-bridge doors ready to walk when the sign was given. I like to have a place for my flight case in the overhead bins…
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When airline, airport and passenger interests collide and cause delays
On 04/06/2010, in CDM, by steve
No matter how much I travel and no matter how bad the airport travel experience is getting as a result of increased security, I still like airports and the walk from the taxi rank to the gate. Negotiating the various artificial obstacles erected to keep the bad guys out, I always bless the inventors of internet check-in as the little A4 sheet in my pocket allows me to bypass the check-in counters and even the self-check-in kiosks. Not to mention the airline ladies with steely eyes who always insisted in the past that my flight case be weighed. As it was always above the misery 6 kilos allowed by our favorite local airline, I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to make the bag loose weight (until I walked away from the check-in counter that is). This problem is now gone with internet check in but I keep wondering: if I went to the counter, would she again be difficult about the extra 2 kilos of gear, knowing full well that if I used their internet check-in facility, nobody would care about the bag (very few airlines actually weigh stuff at the gate unless it really looks huge or heavy or both). But I diverge…
Having gone through security, the airport with its concourses and shops and gates is suddenly open for me and I feel like a bird let out of its cage. Of course the feeling is false, just like the freedom of the bird that passes from the cage into the living room. So, I am free to do anything I like except that the airport, by design, arrangement and enforced routing tries to influence me to pass by the shops, the cafés and other places happy to exchange my euros for things I have absolutely no need for and the price of which is way above what the same stuff usually costs even on the high street, let alone an internet store.
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TITAN stakeholder workshop – 17 March 2010
On 31/05/2010, in TITAN, by steve
TITAN is an EC 7th Framework project and the acronym stands for “Turnaround Integration in Trajectory and Network”. As its name suggests, TITAN is looking at ways of optimizing the turnaround process while integrating it in trajectory based, net-centric operations.
The Workshop held in Brussels on 17 March 2010 had two objectives: on the one hand it presented the project to the community and on the other it collected stakeholders’ needs and requirements in the context of the turnaround process. All the actors (airspace users, airports, ANSPs and handling companies) who would be affected by the new TITAN concept had been invited to attend the workshop and the turn-out was very good. It was therefore possible to capture their daily concerns, needs and proposals in a representative manner.
The format chosen for the workshop was that of focused brainstorming with selected facilitators making sure that the time and scope objectives were observed. As it turned out, the format was very successful and participants contributed actively in the general sessions as well as in the group sessions.
The introductory session
Work started with an introduction of the project followed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking giving an overview of their main activities in the context of turnaround and the input they expected from TITAN to fill the gaps identified in the relevant parts of the SESAR work packages.
Next, an analysis of the current situation was presented, highlighting the potential bottlenecks. An initial turnaround model was also sketched to seed and start the discussions.
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Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – History and current practice
On 09/02/2010, in CDM, by steve
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The concept of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was originally defined in the United States by a group of airlines, led by US Air, in response to what the airlines perceived as inadequate co-operation between airports, the FAA and the airlines themselves. They formed the so called CDM Group, members of which visited several airports with traffic flow problems and analysed the reasons.
Significantly, they discovered that in many cases the reasons were in fact quite trivial. In one case, a missing telephone connection between the FAA tower and the Delta ramp controller was found to be at the root of major departure delays; in another case the “secret” nature of cancelled flights was found to be the cause of unused slots at an otherwise seriously congested airport.
The CDM Group in its original reports had actually established three of the most basic rules of CDM which remain valid to this day even if, unfortunately, in some cases they are being ignored. The three rules are:
• Most problems have simple causes with simple solutions
• Better information sharing eliminates a very large proportion of the problems
• CDM can only be successful if trust is established between the partners as the first step
Although the CDM Group did at first address problems at airports (Atlanta and Philadelphia) when the FAA embraced the concept, they focused on applying it in the en-route environment. This was a natural consequence of the US scene where capacity constraints were present en-route while airports were almost all free flow at the time. Nevertheless, US airports got involved in CDM early as a result of the FAA’s ground-delay concept. The value of information sharing was shown right from the start. Just by being better informed, airlines were able to respond to the restrictions in a much more efficient manner. The initiative in the early 1990s called FAA/Airline Data Exchange (FADE), supported among others by Northwest Airlines, can be seen as the direct forerunner of what evolved into the US CDM project of to-day.
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TITAN Kicks into high gear
On 08/12/2009, in TITAN, by steve
After several months of careful preparation, TITAN, a project in the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, kicked
into high gear on 3 December 2009 when the TITAN Consortium held the kick-off meeting at INECO’s premises in Madrid.
The name TITAN stands for “Turn-round Integration in Trajectory and Network”. The project will analyze the aircraft turn-round process with a view to identifying opportunities for improvements as well as to pinpoint the influence of external actors and processes like passenger flow and baggage handling. The improved turn-round process will be modeled and validated and a decision support tool will be developed suitable for use by different partners, enabling them to manage the turn-round process more efficiently. This will be achieved primarily by providing predictive, common awareness of all the relevant influences, including those coming from the airport land-side.
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BluePower CDM Toolbox– The perfect tool for airport Collaborative Decision Making
On 31/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
Originally Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was a simple concept indeed. Realizing that a lot of problems in air traffic management came from the simple fact that many of the partners simply did not talk to each other, it was easy to reach the conclusion: make them work together, stop decisions being made in isolation, improve decisions by making them the result of a collaborative endeavor.
It was not easy at first and people invented all kinds of reasons for not doing it… most of the reasons given were simply not valid. We will be bringing you a short history of CDM later and you will see why I am saying this. To a large extent thanks to a small group of enthusiasts (the famous original CDM group in the US), more and more airlines and airports realized that working together was far more beneficial than hiding behind ill-defined concepts of commercial sensitivities.
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New directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – a detailed example
On 13/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
If you have read my article on the New Directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), you will be interested in this narrative description of the envisaged working of the expanded CDM concept. I do strongly recommend that you read the New Directions article first!
The example used is that of a departing flight. It is not a formal use-case as such and it focuses on the most important new features only. The scenario does not aim to be all-encompassing but sufficient detail is provided to enable readers to get a better understanding of the novel applications of CDM. A number of new services are mentioned in this scenario which are in addition to those mentioned in the original article. Their role is self explanatory but if you have any question, please write a comment and I will explain things in more detail.
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New directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)
On 07/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
What exactly is CDM?
Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is not a new concept. It is being practiced to a certain degree both in the US and in Europe, focus being on en-route in the former and airports in the latter. Mature as the concept may be, surprisingly we still see experts who seem to believe that CDM is little more than a few wise men sitting together and deciding things for the benefit of the community… Little wonder that they see a role for CDM that is strictly limited to the strategic planning phases. They seem to hang on to this view even in the face of actual CDM implementations at some airports (e.g. Munich) which are anything but limited to the strategic phase. So, what is CDM?
The concept of CDM is very simple. Decisions on all levels must be made not in isolation but based on a shared, common view of the state of the ATM network with full awareness of the consequences of the decisions on every aspect of the operation. Collaborative in this context does not necessarily imply people sitting together or working together remotely. A single person can also make a collaborative decision if the decision is based on the shared information provided by the partners and if it takes into account the impact of the decision on those partners and the ATM network as a whole.
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(Before) all else fails… read the Concept! Part 2.
On 23/09/2009, in Buzzwords explained, by steve
What is a net-centric system?
Net-centric, in its most common definition, refers to “participation as a part of a continuously evolving, complex community of people, devices, information and services interconnected by a communications network to optimise resource management and provide superior information on events and conditions needed to empower decision makers.” It will be clear from the definition that “net-centric” does not refer to a network as such. It is a term that covers all elements constituting the environment referred to as “net-centric”.
Exchanges between members of the community are based not on cumbersome individual interfaces and point to point connections but a flexible network paradigm that is never a hindrance to the evolution of the net-centric community. Net-centricity promotes a “many-to-many” exchange of data, enabling a multiplicity of users and applications to make use of the same data which in itself extends way beyond the traditional, predefined and package oriented data set while still being standardized sufficiently to ensure global interoperability. The aim of a net-centric system is to make all data visible, available and usable, when needed and where needed, to accelerate and improve the decision making process.
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Net-centric air traffic management system explained
On 11/08/2009, in Buzzwords explained, by steve
Net-centric, in its most common definition, refers to “participation as a part of a continuously evolving, complex community of people, devices, information and services interconnected by a communications network to optimise resource management and provide superior information on events and conditions needed to empower decision makers.” It will be clear from the definition that “net-centric” does not refer to a network as such. It is a term that covers all elements constituting the environment referred to as “net-centric”.
Exchanges between members of the community are based not on cumbersome individual interfaces and point to point connections but a flexible network paradigm that is never a hindrance to the evolution of the net-centric community. Net-centricity promotes a “many-to-many” exchange of data, enabling a multiplicity of users and applications to make use of the same data which in itself extends way beyond the traditional, predefined and package oriented data set while still being standardised sufficiently to ensure global interoperability. The aim of a net-centric system is to make all data visible, available and usable, when needed and where needed, to accelerate and improve the decision making process.
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