Validation exercise “EXE001 – DLR & UkSATSE” will validate the FCA concept using the upper Ukrainian airspace (above FL275). In sector-based operations, this airspace is divided into 21 sectors controlled by four area control centers. Exercise 001 merges those into a single Ukraine Flight Centric ATC airspace. FCA air traffic controllers will operate in single-person configuration, supported by conflict detection and resolution tools, a filtering and probing function and other tools refined specifically for Flight Centric ATC.
Complemented by Exercise 002 – EXE002 – ENAIRE/CRIDA & INDRA, the goal of the exercise is to close gaps in the research of the Flight Centric ATC concept that remained open in previous studies and raising its maturity from Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 6-ongoing to full TRL 6. Besides confirming the operational feasibility of the concept, the exercise investigates the impact of the FCA concept on human performance, air traffic controller productivity, CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
The highlight of the exercise will be a real-time simulation campaign taking place in two parts in November 2024 at DLR’s Flight Centric ATC Laboratory in Braunschweig, Germany. Over the course of eight days in each part of the campaign, a total of ten air traffic controllers from UkSATSE will undergo a system training and different validation runs, covering the investigated use cases. During and after the validation runs, quantitative (e.g. fuel consumption and number of conflict occurrences) and qualitative (questionnaires and debriefing) data will be collected. To allow for a quantitative comparison with conventional operations, the exercise is supported by a fast-time simulation of sector-based reference scenarios conducted by AgentFly Technologies.
