Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight
A capability of cooperative and coordinated flight operations founded on a platform of secure digital information exchange, distributed authority, and intelligent onboard automation for flight path management in four dimensions (lateral, vertical, & time) to promote ubiquitous, safe, seamless, and efficient airspace utilization for all operators and with flexible architectures that enable operators to achieve their unique and diverse mission objectives with minimal restriction.
Intelligent and Adaptive Automation
Collective learning and dynamic information processing that augments operations and optimization of shared resources, with built-in resilience through intelligent and adaptive automation and applications, such as enhanced weather forecasting and predictive routing efficiency.
In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance
A broad range of safety systems that proactively mitigate risks and demonstrate innovative solutions while ultimately ensuring safety to the community on the ground and in the airspace, employing services, functions, and capabilities that perform comprehensive monitoring and communication of the aviation system state, assessment of elevated risks, and mitigation actions to assure safety.
Micro-Services for Flight Operators
A diverse marketplace of appropriately authorized service providers distributed throughout the aviation ecosystem supporting flight operations with a wide range of micro-services to meet the varied needs of each operator in the local airspace.
Data and Decision Support Marketplace
A data-and-reasoning fabric providing an open virtual ecosystem of secured software infrastructure, tools, protocols, governance and policies to implement, manage and operate data sharing and reasoning services across the entire span of mobility for real-time decision support.
Digital Airspace
A capability of airspace and air traffic management founded on a platform of digital information and automation to promote safe, seamless, and flexible airspace utilization for all operators and considers airspace constraints dynamically by digital means to ensure system performance and safety.
We envision two community groups, day of use and contributing. Contributing stakeholders perform research, development, and implementation to ensure the day of use stakeholders are successful.
Day of Use Stakeholders
Contributing Stakeholders
Planning
A new airline, Up & Away Air (UAA), seeks to tap into tourist and business travel to and from newly popular destinations. These areas are prone to rapidly forming and dissipating local thunderstorms that result in frequently invoked and cancelled traffic flow management programs, producing disruptive ground holds for many flights destined to these areas.
New capabilities like Digital Airspace provide information on areas where demand is predicted to exceed capacity and operating modes like Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight give operators an alternative to these restrictions, allowing them to depart at a time of their choosing. In selecting their departure time, they balance the risk of arrival holding or diversion versus the benefit of being well positioned to land when the storms dissipate.
Using Intelligent and Adaptive Automation tools in risk management, UAA regularly invokes advanced analytics of predicted weather conditions versus historical trends as input to their departure time decisions.
Operation
UAA and other such flights conducted under Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight depart from their origin airports at an optimal time. They receive the latest information on weather trends and destination airport arrival schedules via Digital Airspace and the Data and Decision Support Marketplace, while submitting their own weather observations en route. For maximum system efficiency, NAS infrastructure status and actual and predicted flight delays are also disseminated to all aviation stakeholders in a timely fashion.
Proceeding on self-optimized flight paths, UAA flights minimize the workload burden on air traffic services by yielding right-of-way to other flights being managed under positive control, thereby allowing all flights to continue their operations despite the uncertain weather conditions.
Operational data is accumulated and disseminated within the airline and between operators through In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance systems that predict unsafe conditions before they occur and alert operators, helping to further the airline industry’s solid safety record.
Approaching the destination, the UAA flights adjust speed, altitude, and flight path based on weather predictions produced by Micro-Services for Flight Operators to prevent the need for fuel-inefficient holds. The operator coordinates arrival times with Digital Airspace to maximize the efficiency of time-based flow metering onto final approach and enable no-delay taxiing to the gate.
Success
The UAA flights arrive with minimal delay using a flight path that meets operator objectives while maximizing efficiency and reducing environmental impact, adding to an impressive on-time arrival performance among its peers. Over time, UAA refines their departure time and routing strategy based on accumulated experience under similar conditions, aided by machine-learning analytics of Intelligent and Adaptive Automation.
Their success spurs additional airlines to adopt new operational models, maintaining competitive pressure among the carriers and ensuring long-term sustainability of the airline industry.
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