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Following the tragic loss of Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic in June 2009, the European Commission asked the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) to find solutions for the better tracking of aircraft in oceanic and remote low density airspace. The consortium responsible for the Oceanic Position Tracking Improvement & Monitoring (OPTIMI) project now delivered their report to the SESAR Joint Undertaking with recommendations regarding technical, operational, economic and regulatory changes.

OPTIMI was launched with the aim to speed up rescue reaction times and accident analysis and diagnosis. After an initial analysis of the current situation from technical, operational, social, economic and regulatory perspectives, sets of in-flight demonstrations involving commercial flights in the North Atlantic, European and African regions of the Atlantic Ocean were carried out. Their objective was to assess the added value of using existing Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) based flight tracking services and existing ‘Controller pilot data link communication’ (CPDLC) technology in combination with new procedures and protocols to achieve the necessary improvement of aircraft tracking.

Recommendations

The consortium carrying out the project on behalf of the SJU now recommended on a technological level to encourage the equipage and use of Future Air Navigation System products (FANS 1/A) for Oceanic Area Control Centers and aircraft flying oceanic areas; this will cover in particular ADS-C and CPDLC. At the same time, improvements of procedures should be envisaged with the automatic transmission of the aircraft position in oceanic and remote areas in an interval of 15 minutes. An automatic transmission of the position should be triggered whenever a deviation from the planned route is detected. “The OPTIMI study shows that the technical elements to improve aircraft tracking are already available. It is now important to make full use of this technology by proposing the necessary regulatory changes”, says José Calvo Fresno, Chief Regulatory Affairs of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.

Although the increase in the cost of ATC communications due to OPTIMI would be very limited, it was found possible to further optimise this cost along the service provision chain in the oceanic areas. The consortium also calls on rescue and area control centres to jointly develop protocols for notifications and interventions in emergency situations. Further research is also needed regarding technologies and procedures for the downloading of aircraft safety critical data to the ground on an event-triggered basis, together with the possibility of creating a central repository to manage this information. The SAT-OPTIMI project – a side project studying on how to make best use of today’s and future satellite communication for OPTIMI – will be dealing with these topics during the next three months.

International Perspective

Taking the recommendations from this study, the SJU will also work closely with some international partners to address the issue of improved search and rescue procedures as well as to verify the benefits of OPTIMI. Canada already participated in OPTIMI; and it is expected that Brazil and México will join soon through respective agreements on the technical level.

The way forward

The SJU, based on the final report of the OPTIMI consortium, will propose regulatory initiatives to the European Commission in the first half of 2011. There are several possibilities, from a purely prescriptive approach, in line with datalink regulation, to the use of incentive mechanisms exploring the performance scheme. There would be differences in the way each approach could affect airlines registered in Europe or abroad, for what the options will be carefully weighted. At the same time, the SJU is working with ICAO to promote these recommendations on a global basis.

The Side effect

“While we originally intended to ‘only’ improve aircraft positioning and tracking, allowing for example a better reaction time in case of an accident, the study also showed that through the proposed actions, we will considerably lower the risk of mid-air collisions. OPTIMI will therefore increase safety. Air traffic controllers will be regularly updated on the exact aircraft position; should there be any potential problem, they will be able to act”, emphasises José Calvo Fresno this positive side effect of OPTIMI.