Welcome to one more episode of Radar Contact for today with a bit of a special program I have my colleague Julija with me. Julija, good morning.
Julija:
Good morning Vincent.
Vincent:
And for the last two and a half years on that podcast, we had a lot of guests from all possible angles of the ATM world and we asked them, each of them, how they see the evolution in the next five years and also in the next 50 years and a few of them told us actually guys, it's a nice question you should answer it yourself. And for today's episodes we will take that challenge and that opportunity and we will look both from a technical and from an operational side, to what we seeing at FoxATM, we will see in the next five and 50 years. So I hope you are ready for that.
Julija:
I hope so too, Vincent, that's a really good question and I'm looking forward answering it.
Vincent:
Okay, let me take a start. Start with five years and to split the episode a bit we'll do first look at center air traffic control and then at tower air traffic control because there are different aspects to that obviously. And one of my personal takes on five years is that we will see even more integration than what we've seen so far in the sense that flight plan and surveillance will merge even more. When I started in ATC 20 years ago, we clearly had one flight plan system on one side and a surveillance system on the other side. And then things started to merge always more. We had updates of the flight plan from the radar system with progress and things like that. We have seen systems coming from paper strips to electronic strips and even to stripless where you start to see the controllers interacting with the flights only on the surveillance screen.
And I note myself, I still have problems to say surveillance screen or not radar screen because that's also one of the other changes we've seen. We see technologies like multilateration coming in, ADS-B in some places coming in. So it's not only radar, obviously it's it's surveillance, but the point is still I think there will be more and more integration of the two systems and for the controllers it could become, I would not say unclear but transparent to know when you do a change, when you change for example a flight level or you change an estimate on an exit point, it'll be always more transparent to know that everything you need to do when you do such a change inform your colleague, inform the next centers, possibly inform network manager, modify your flight plan. It'll all happen transparently. You will just click a new flight level and all the changes will take in place because there is no reason actually to make the controller busy with changing your flight level in different places. And basically that mean the controllers will have more opportunity to focus on solving problems and less have to deal with the technicalities behind that. And I hope Julija, you can see the same thing here at least can complement on that from an operational perspective.
Julija:
Yes, exactly. My view from the operational perspective is similar because for 15 years I've been working with one air traffic control system and it was less automated than it was than the second system I used. So in the second system when it was coming to our center, the former center I was working in, the air traffic controllers had more time for their creativity I would call it to solve a conflict. But on the other hand they had more traffic to handle because it grew very rapidly. So these functions you mentioned and these features of a system, they really help the air traffic controllers to handle more traffic, to handle more traffic safely and to increase the capacity of the sectors which is actually growing as well too fast. So I think that in the next upcoming years, five years from now, we will have that we have more things to more time sorry to focus on the conflict solving and less on messages sending and interactions between human and system, which sometimes takes too much time.
Vincent:
That's true. And what interaction I see being reduced as well is the interaction between humans and I think control centers will become even more silent and there is already a big change when you go into a control center that uses strips or if you go to a stripless or electronic strip center, the noise level is completely different because you don't have the strip holders clacking against each other, you don't have the printers. But I think the verbal communication will decrease and I think we will use much more silent communication and silent coordination between controllers and using CPDLC and ADS-C probably with the crews as well. I can't imagine in the five years with the further implementation of CPDLC that all non-urgent clearances will be replaced with CPDLC messages and one can think that will take a bit of the human touch out of the system, which probably is true.
But if you look at coordination between controllers or between centers, having that done via the system and not by a phone call probably makes things easier because you don't interrupt. I mean when you call someone you need to have their attention immediately be it next sector controllers or a pilot and when you send a message by a system, they can process it when they have time, which is probably reducing fatigue and easing things on their mental thinking even if it takes a bit of the human feeling out of the loop. But I think everything like frequency changes, climbs, descents that are not conflicting, all these things will be transmitted or shall be transmitted electronically in the coming five years.
Julija:
Yes, you are complete completely right on this one. And we do have CPDLC implemented in Europe, in European airspace. And from my experience it is a very nice feature for an traffic controller and a pilot to have a quick interaction of non-emergency information, the messages which can be sent quickly and understood also quickly. And for a pilot to act on it, just having a text and not hearing an air traffic controller giving the instruction, I think it's a lot easier. It's faster and again it increases the capacity of instructions the air traffic controllers may give or the pilots or the aircraft may receive in the sector.
Vincent:
Another thing I'd like to see coming and it is coming actually more and more is free route airspace. We see initiatives especially in the eastern part of Europe where you now have cross border free route airspace, which is really nice from a technical perspective, free route airspace has one big challenge and one advantage, and let me start with the advantage. You don't have to maintain the maps anymore because mostly the route points, the airways, all these things that have to be configured in the systems, they just vanish. And when you look at aeronautical information management within ATM, it's not where it should be in my view. You still have a lot of conversions taking place at some places you still have Excel sheets involved in pushing data from one system to the other one. And with less routes, less waypoints and more free routes, it should get a bit simpler.
And the other thing that is interesting from a technical point of view is that with free route, conflicts can happen everywhere and that means controllers needs more advanced tools. You need crossings, so you can have crossings everywhere with free route. So you need MTCD. So you need to input the clearances in the system, you need to process them. And from a technical point of view it's, it's really interesting and I guess for controllers it makes controlling at tactical level a bit more challenging because your conflicts can occur everywhere, not just on your crossing points. And I think it's not only makes things more sustainable, it probably makes it a bit more fun for the controllers as well.
Julija:
Yes. Funny part about the free airspace, again, from my experience working on a project of the implementation of free route airspace and afterwards the cross-border operations, the funny part here is that the number of navigation points actually may increase just because we need to give more options for the aircraft to fly path they would like to fly, I mean more direct path. So we have to have more or maybe in some places we have to have more points for them to put in a flight plan. The problem with the free route airspace is of course the airspace is we can't enter. We have military activity all around the Europe and we know how complicated that might get. And on the other hand, during winter or during summer season when we have CBs all around, we are providing the aircraft for the best way path, the shortest, shortest or the quickest way to circumnavigate the clouds and we provide them with the routes they would like to fly not according to flight plans.
So there are two sides of this, but I think the number of free route airspaces should increase in the Europe that would make it a lot easier for the airlines to get what they want actually to fly passengers more directly and more sustainability we will bring to the environment with that I hope actually. And as it comes for the air traffic controllers systems, we do have MTCDs, we do have some systems of course do have the what if function. So the usage of provided automation in the system will actually help to make it a more, how to call it a better for your free route space or yeah, a better for your free route airspace.
Vincent:
Yeah, you mentioned crossborder operation and that's a very easy transition for me to the next topic, something that I'd like to see more in the next five years, but I'm not very confident this will happen is actually cross border operation in the sense that country A controls airspace over country B at some time in the day during the night when the load allows or in case of emergency whatsoever and possibly is that's in two directions between two countries. But my feeling here is that a lot of countries would be ready to take over airspace from their neighbors but not to give airspace away to their neighbors for obvious military aspects, sovereignty, defense. And yes, we have Maastricht that controls upper airspace over the Benelux but it still remains kind of an exception. And I'm not sure if we will see more airspace being exchanged between countries on a dynamic basis in the next five years. That's something I would probably push in the 50 years if even, just because of the national security and sovereignty aspects. I don't know what you think of that.
Julija:
I think you're right. I hope that the visual centers and the cross-border operations can help and will help to back up the main operations if something goes wrong in the main center which provides the air traffic control services, the virtual center and the cross border operations may take over just for a short period of time. And I think that's a good plan to have for air navigation service provider though I really think that none of us or none of the countries would like to give away their airspace because of the reasons you mentioned.
Vincent:
You make an interesting point here because let's imagine two bordering countries, let's say A and B, not to go too political and if they have a massive system issue in country A, country B being able to take over does not mean they have the controllers ready, I mean on site. So it would more be like a takeover for a few days after an incident, but with a shut down first, I can't imagine at this stage country B completely taking over the airspace of country A on a simple notification that they had a failure and you need to have controllers available but you need to have working positions and you probably need to have these guys qualified. So maybe for night, maybe for let's say a medium term emergency, you first shut down your airspace and then you open again from the next place. And that's the way I can imagine that coming.
Julija:
I agree. I know some centers not far away which have like 15 positions ready. Okay, 16 positions ready if we talk about the executive and planner positions, but they only use two or four out of all those which are ready. So we have to have positions, we have to have documents ready for that and we have to have people who would be able to take over in a crisis in a different center. So you are right, there's still a lot of work to do. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think there will be plan B and plan C maybe for all the centers, all the virtual centers or cross-border operations
Vincent:
You just mentioned working position for executive and planners. And here again that's another topic where I see change coming and it hard to say if it's for the five, maybe 10 years, we used to work in a way where you have one executive controller that takes decisions, resolve conflicts, talk to pilots, and a planner controller that looks more at the border of the sector and coordinates with neighbors and things like that. And I think personally that's somewhere where automation will keep growing up because the task of the planner can probably be more automated than today that something some centers that even extra controllers doing what was called regulation and looking at the boundary of the whole center, this tends to vanish, did vanish in some countries and I can imagine that the workload of the planner could be reduced because of what we said before, electronic coordination. There is a lot of time calculations that can be made automatically and I can imagine two things here actually. One would be having one planner for two sectors at first, but I can also imagine something that people are working on already, which is auto planners or AI based or not AI based, but technology based planners or assistants which relieve the pressure on the planners to a point that they could become more executives. Is it five or more years? Hard to say I don't know what you think of that, Julija.
Julija:
I actually been working as a planner and then controller on the sectors where they would be handled by two air traffic controllers and one planner with an older systems. It wasn't that easy. It wasn't actually possible I think, but I think that's maybe a plan or a vision for a longer term, not five years as you mentioned. I don't know if it's for 50 years, but we have to be careful here removing the planner because we have to keep the, well unless the systems are sophisticated enough, but we have to keep the four eyes principle just to be sure that the operations which are provided or the services which are provided in the sector are kept safe. The four eyes principle is really a benefit for a company for airlines to get the best service they can. So I think it is possible, but not in the near future, not in the recent, next, sorry, five years.
Vincent:
We'll see that indeed. And I think what will come more and more is also adherence monitoring. We have that in many centers but also in the sense that what could come is system checking the audio when you have a read back from a pilot that we have system that's listened to that and check is the read back correct. And also maybe check that the controller gives the clearances correctly. If you put your clearance electronically in a system, let's say you click in your label flight level 250 and you say on the radio flight level 260, we could have systems detecting this kind of mistakes and that's probably something we can anticipate. I would say in the next five years
Julija:
It would be a nice feature for the air traffic controllers actually I would really like to try that.
Vincent:
Yeah, that's interesting. There could be a bit of a big brother effect. Just make sure that controllers don't feel like they are monitored too much and they're not measured in term of performance. But that's probably another debate. Now trying to push the boundary. We can look for evolution of center air traffic control in 50 years and I will take the plunge here. I think there will still be a traffic controllers, at least humans in the loop that will probably not be called their traffic controllers anymore because automation will be far further down the roads compared to now.
One of the thing I struggle with a bit is to imagine how you can if someone jump in and take over in the case with technology problems without having that person's doing that on a daily basis. I mean a traffic control is a skill you need to get and you need to maintain and to stay fit. So I can't imagine a system where all the automation fails and will revert to what we have now. So either we will have system that will be fail safe in a sense that even the pilots will be probably much more monitoring than they are today and we go towards something that has different levels of automation and if the highest fail with lower level of automation that can take over. But I can't really imagine a world where there is no way for a human to intervene should something go wrong. It could be that we would've automated aircraft where pilots slash air traffic controllers slash air traffic monitors call them the way you want, can take over from the ground. So if something goes wrong on the aircraft and someone can take over from the ground, but I can't really imagine a system that would be let's say fully automated.
Julija:
That's a nice vision you have. I agree on many points of it. I personally wouldn't like the name to be changed. The air traffic controller is a very nice profession and the name for it and once the controller always a controller, so I hope that it'll stay that way. But yes, actually there are more automation right now in all the systems geo traffic control system, the aircraft system systems as well monitored and the outcome that we get the information with which we can work gives us more creativity to push our boundaries even to higher levels of safety if that can be improved. I think that in 50 years it's of course very hard to guess, but my vision would be to introduce AI to introduce the artificial intelligence in the systems, working together with people and helping them not overtaking the whole position or overtaking the whole control but helping and improving the service we provide now.
Vincent:
That's true and I can also imagine air traffic controllers stick to the name controlling more traffic than what we have now for now typically depending on sector complexity, the zone of comfort is around 15 to 20 aircraft under control. Don't nail me on the wall for the figures, it really depends on the sector and I can imagine with integrated communication, AI taking most of the decisions and someone monitoring and interacting were required. We can probably go up to 50 aircraft under control, but that's assuming correct safety nets and everything. The Eurocontrol prognosis still goes through the sky at some point and they have constant growth. So I guess there will be more demand for traveling. We could talk about sustainability and how to make aviation green, but that's a bit off topic. And yeah, I think we will go towards more automation and even more interesting job actually and a better, more funny and as you said, creative work for air traffic controllers.
Julija:
I actually hope that in 50 years we will have implemented the dynamic sectorization, at least in European sectors that would really help to manage all the sectors and spread the aircraft and the number of aircraft that we have, not congesting once too much and the others leaving just too empty. So I hope that'll be done already.
Vincent:
Yeah, that's an interesting concept as well. It's true to have although controllers controlling aircraft for a longer time and not depend on fixed sector boundaries. That's a really good point. Now we can go lower and look at such lower airspace and what will happen with towers. And here again I will start with five years. In the last five to 10 years we've seen remote towers become mainstream. I would say not the majority by far obviously, but I mean remote tower technology is a done thing now you have London City in operation, you have the Swedish mountain airports, you have projects coming up in France, in Romania, in Belgium. So we know now how to operate a tower remotely, which probably is a big change for the controllers. Simply the fact of not going up physically on a tower middle of the airfield being the pedestal that it is, it's probably kind of a change, but this is a done change now when we start to see the benefits of its in other terms, not in term of being remote but in term of being digital. And this is something we've seen in Geneva and where the great demonstration that's at NATS for that thing where you can see how having the outside view replaced by cameras and having pictures processed by computers can give you alerts and can improve your situational awareness. And getting digital towers is probably the more important thing compared to remote because it gives an added level of integration and security again here. And this is something I look forward to see more and more in the coming five years in more toward around Europe and the world.
Julija:
Well two years ago I visited the Madrid exhibition, seeing drones and remote towers. Splitting the exhibition in half was a really interesting thing for me to discover back then. I didn't think that it would be so popular or it would get so popular that fast. But I agree here that the concept is taking over and just as long as it's not a trend but something we need to do for some airports, I am totally with that idea. Sometimes there's a situation when it's a trend and we only want to keep up to it. So we still need some calculations to make. We still need some technical aspects to be written down, risks to be managed and so on. But yes, it is coming. It is here already in some countries, sometime in some cities and it is spreading around fast.
Vincent:
Yeah, that's true. And what you said is correct, we need to make a CBA for remote towers because they are not always the best thing. One side is obviously saving real estate at airports. There are airports where tearing down the tower could mean one more parking position, which for the airport itself is really important. And you also have towers that are aging. Some towers are 30, 40 years old and need replacement. And then you can ask yourself, do you really need your tower to be in the center of your airport? Do you need your tower to be airside or can you just choose a standards and even probably more comfortable and easier to access room a hundred meters away. The next step is obviously doing that at a larger scale like LFV is doing with the center where they control different remote airspace, sorry, airfields from one place still having one controller and one equipment set for each airfield.
That's the same thing that is happening in Norway. Now the same thing happens in Germany where you have a remote tower center where you have different of these equipments and here you start to have economies of scale because you can have controllers qualified on different towers and you can have a better rostering, you can manage your workload, but it still is one controller, one tower. And I think one of the main steps, one the main changes that we could see in the future will be one controller, multiple towers. But this is something where work still has to be done. If you look at the current remote tower concepts and where you look where remote towers are used for now it is mostly still not to say IFR only prior permission required easy to anticipate traffic when your traffic will pop out. If you look at a typical regional airport tower, you can imagine a nice weather weekend with VFR traffic calling like, hey, hey Hotel Bravo, whatever, five miles south of the field for landing. And I can't imagine controllers managing multiple towers with this happening at the same time at different places.
Julija:
Well, where to start... multi tower concept, why now is a bit too far in the future. We need to work on that and we need to work a lot for an air traffic controller working in a visual tower. Actually it would be a nice change I think. I'm not a tower controller, my experience in the tower is I think two weeks during the university studies, but I saw the demonstration in that it was really nice, it was really good looking. It was with all sorts of features and information provided for the air traffic controller and being representative of the profession. I would like to try that again, not the multi tower concept because it seems a bit too fast for now, too premature. So unless it's a really sophisticated with many backups redundant system, maybe not in five years, maybe it's a concept for a 50 year plan.
Vincent:
In term of large airports, one of the advantage I see for remote towers is, as we said, digitalizing the image gives you more options. For example, you can have warnings if an aircraft overruns a stop bar. I mean working with infrared cameras in bad visibility basically makes bad visibility go away because you can see through the clouds and there are this kind of things. But I have a feeling that's one of the biggest barrier to more capacity for now is the lack of coordination between the tower and the cockpits. We mentioned CPDLC before speaking with centers and you have some aircraft, when the CPDLC message comes in, you can just click agree, approve, and it goes in the FMS and the things happen. And I don't see that in tower yet. When I was flying myself, one of the thing I was the most afraid of was the taxi clearance. You land atn an airport to get a taxi clearance with many different instructions, turn left here, turn right there. And if it's not your home base, it's something really difficult and I don't see a lot of things happening here. So maybe in the next 50 years, we'll have things with more digital clearances going straight to the cockpits to support the pilots and also go a bit more towards datalink. But for now, CPDLC is clearly headed towards centers only. And I think there is work we can do here.
Julija:
You are right, actually 10 years ago when I first heard about the airports or air fields where pilots can land by themselves and switching on the lighting, lighting system via frequency, that sounded really as from scientific books for me. So we now work with that technology and it's really, we work with that on daily basis. So I think it is possible to have such airports and airfields here. And one story from several years ago, I remember talking to a colleague of mine about the phones that we use right now just because we had a question of why we need to change systems, why we need to update something, why we need to implement something new. And my question was what kind of a phone we used 10 years or 50 years ago, those with a circle once when you have to choose the number and you have to turn the ring and then you have to wait for signal and so on. So we don't have that now. We have a computer in our pockets, which is also sometimes used as a phone. So the technologies are really advanced right now and companies are working on it, still working on implementing better features in what we have right now. So I think that it is really possible. It is. It'll look really nice. It'll be really nice. We just have to start changing our mindset and start fixating of what we have right now is the best thing technology wise.
Vincent:
You make a really interesting point here, and there are two things I'd like to say as a more technical person. First we see in technology and a constant acceleration, it's not just like your telephone gets replaced every second year, which will remain, but the steps between each of your telephones, every seconder gets bigger and bigger all the time. So technology advances always faster. And this is an obstacle we have to face with certification because obviously it's still ATC, safety first and safety will always be the first concern. And taking bigger and bigger technology steps is something that makes our lives harder. And it's true in some cases we work with technology that are 20 plus years old and this is something we will need to deal with in a different way to be able to keep up with the pace of technology. And it's, I'm in an easy seat here because I just say we need to deal with that in a different way.
If you ask me what's the new way would be, I don't have so much ideas for now in software, we speak a lot about agile development. You have things like, oh look at Amazon, they do 1000 relasess a year or even a day. It's not something that can happen when you have an authority in the loop that has to put a stamp on each release done. And we have to find a way to work in the next 50 years in a more flexible but still safe way. That's one thing. And the other reason for which we need to do that is to keep attracting people. If you look at people coming out of it university these days, they want to work with up-to-date technologies, AI, web-based, a part of it is bells and whistle, but a part of it is real. I mean if you go to someone and say, Hey look, I work at in ATC, I do something fascinating. And by the way, the technologies we use, it's C++ / Qt, things that came out like 20 years ago, not how you can attract new people and new talents to ATC. And this is also becoming a challenge and something we would've to work for that. That's something I would probably place at 10 to 15 years down the road.
Julija:
Yes, you're completely, completely right. Just one note on safety first. Several years ago I been through some courses and I heard an interesting idea, service first, safety always because when we are going online trying to find tickets for air travel, we are not thinking about safety, we're thinking about service. And as a passenger we also tend to like the companies, the airlines which provide us with better service. So I think that yes, safety is always here. We have to think about it, but we also have to think about that we are in a service field and navigation "service" providers has the word in their name. So that's an interesting topic to speak because there are always two sides or more sides of it. So keeping up with the technologies, but also thinking about the human part in it and helping to adapt to learn how to work with the technology is a key point here
Vincent:
That that's very true indeed. And speaking of lower airspace, the next evolution that happens, and this is definitely one for the next five years, is everything happening with drones and air taxis. And here I make the difference on purpose because there is still a difference between flying a delivery box or a pizza around or to make it more serious, a lab sample between a hospital and a lab is one thing, but having people on board makes a big difference. And it's clear for me that drones will have to come to airports because that's probably where the business case is. The business case of air taxis is between airports and city centers. It's within the CTR definitely, especially when you have an airport closer enough to the city for the city to be in the CTR as well. And this is why ANSPs have to deal with drones and drone traffic.
And when you have people from the drone company, there are hundreds of them for now, they come to you with a business model which is like, oh look, in six months I will have 300 delivery drones flying in your city. And on the other side you have people from ANSPs or from aviation in general that are, let's say, not used to this kind of pace. And there is an interesting cultural meetup, not to say cultural shock happening here. And because of the numbers it will not be possible to deconflict drones the way we deconflict traditional aircraft. If you have dozens of drones flying around the city, they will have to deconflict themselves automatically. And this is definitely an important challenge, but we will also see them come at the airport because for now, that's probably where the money is.
Julija:
That's an interesting topic and it's for now a bit too far away. But yes, we have to think about that because the air airspace has to be restructured in order to provide service for drones as well, for unmanned traffic. And it is happening already in some parts of Europe. I know projects have started of introducing drones into the uncontrolled airspace first. It's also, it's coming, it's there or we know that we want to use them and it's safe to use drones for parcels or shipments or whatever delivering, delivering food to our homes. Not people for now, but it's again in a mindset when you hear a lot of, let's imagine you hear than drones all around delivering somehow, I don't know, some things to your home and conflicting themselves. It's like predator birds flying after some smaller ones. It's, it's an interesting idea. I don't know how that will change our lives, but it's coming.
Vincent:
Now, coming to the end of that episode, I realize two things: asking people about five and 50 years is a nice and interesting question, but it's also a hard one to answer. So we've done our best today to give our own view, our own answer to that question. And I look forward to other guests again, but at least now we can say we've done it too. So we've been through that. Thank you Julija, for making that episode with me today. It was a pleasure to share that with you and thank you very much.
Julija:
Thank you, Vincent. Thank you for talking about the topic of which I actually like to talk in my daily routine, so that was really nice. Thank you.
