High Density en Route airspace safety level and colllision risk estimation based on stored aircraft tracks

Abstract

The major constraint in developing appropriate monitoring methodologies and tools to assess the level of safety in en-route airspaces where controllers monitor air traffic by means of radar surveillance and provide aircraft with tactical instructions lies in the estimation of the operational risk. The operational risk estimate normally relies on incident reports provided by the air navigation service providers (ANSPs). The provision of incident reports is highly dependent on the safety management practices of each ANSP and requires the complete cooperation of both controllers (in identifying and reporting altitude deviations) and incident investigators (in providing operational reports to the RMA in good time). The EUROCONTROL 2009 SRC Annual Safety Report concludes that whilst "there has been an improvement in reporting of safety occurrences, overall progress towards full reporting by states is too slow." This paper presents a new and innovative approach to assessing aircraft safety level within En-route Airspaces based upon the process and analysis of radar tracks. The proposed methodology has been designed to complement the information collected in the accident and incident databases, thereby providing the following information inferred from the in depth assessment of proximate events