ACCS Weekly Meeting - Visiting Speaker

This is a tremendous opportunity to hear about future developments and paradigms in Air Traffic Management directly from an industry practitioner.

Place: Room 621/622, GP South (Building 78)
Time: Thursday 15 March 2007, 10:30am Morning Tea, 11:00am Seminar

Speaker: Greg McDonald, Future Directions Division, Airservices Australia

Title: Airservices' Perspective on Tailored Arrivals

A Tailored Arrival is a procedure that will allow Air Traffic Services (ATS) to utilise the current capabilities of existing aircraft Flight Management Computers (FMC) to provide an enhanced and more predictable ATM environment. To meet a computed time at an entry fix, the arrival clearance is "tailored" to the specific aircraft type's optimal descent trajectory at the current gross weight and takes into account:

*        the current winds and temperatures at various levels,
*        the current traffic disposition, and
*        contains all necessary speed, altitude and routing constraints.

A future Tailored Arrivals-based flow management tool would vary and allocate speed constraints based on distance, aircraft model, and the actual (updated) winds to accurately meet a programmed time at an entry fix (dynamic STAR), using a Continuous Descent Arrival (CDA), reducing controller/pilot workload and enhancing arrival predictability. Greg McDonald will present Airservices' perspective on Tailored Arrivals and description of the data collection and analysis for development that is currently going on.

Bio:
Greg McDonald has an operational ATC background with over 25 years experience in ATM. He has held ratings in tower, arrivals and enroute in both radar and non radar. Since 1995 he has worked in procedure development with a keen interest in providing efficiencies for airlines. In 2005 he was the project manager that delivered AUSOTS Flex Tracks, an initiative in wind efficient tracks that has provided significant fuel and cost savings to airlines. He is now focused on the R&D work to develop true trajectory based ATM.