Air Traffic Smoothness. A New Look at the Air Traffic Flow Management

Air traffic flow and capacity management is one of the basic activities which aims at assuring safety and economic efficiency of air traffic. In European airspace it is realized by Network Management Operation Centre (NMOC) in a centralized way. On the domestic level these services are provided by Flow Management Position (FMP). When the boundary value of the traffic volume is exceeded and too much controller workload is expected, FMP introduces regulations and restrictions to the traffic which are to prevent such situations. The aim of this paper was to propose using air traffic smoothness instead of air traffic volume when defining the threshold values that trigger FMP actions. The measurements and analysis of air traffic controllers actions during handling real traffic were carried out. Simultaneously the actual traffic volume was recorded and air traffic smoothness was determined with the use of the calculation tool developed. As a result, a relationship between the traffic smoothness and controller’s workload was identified. At the same time some inconvenience during operational use of the traffic volume in FMP’s activity was observed. This leads to the conclusion that it is possible to use the traffic smoothness to support FMP in operational air traffic flow management. More research is necessary to confirm the observed relationships as well as to determine the exact quantitative relationships.