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Stanley Schmidt

2024, New Trends in Civil Aviation: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on New Trends in Civil Aviation 2024, Praha, České vysoké učení technické v Praze), p. 275-281), ISBN 978-80-01-07181-6, ISSN 2694-7854

For decades, records have been kept in the field of air traffic services on every issued ATC clearance based on the service performance directive. There are various information carriers used for this recording. Technological progress has shifted this operation from paper to digital records. This article compares two of the most commonly used methods of recording issued permissions: the traditional method of paper flight strips and the modern stripless system. This research aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis and assess the impact on flight management efficiency emphasizing air traffic controller situational awareness. In the case of the conventional method, it is necessary to monitor more values outside the scope of the situational display, physically move the flight strip holders, located outside the field of view, and tilt the head down. In the second case, the system offers the necessary functions for data entry as an integrated part of the software. Therefore, diverting the view outside the display unit is not necessary. Using both recording methods, an experiment was set up to measure the air traffic controller's situational awareness level. The Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) system was used for situational awareness assessment. The research and real life experience indicate, that the stripless recording method has smaller negative impact on situational awareness and is more user friendly. Subjects maintained a better situational overview compared to the paper-based method. This article presents the strengths and weaknesses of individual methods and contributes to the discussion of cognitive functions in air traffic control.

2024, 2024 New Trends in Aviation Development (NTAD), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)), p. 32-37), ISBN 979-8-3315-2774-7, ISSN 2836-2764

As the density of air traffic increases, greater demands are being placed on its efficiency. Various initiatives within Air Traffic Management strive to optimize airspace design and corresponding procedures. Implementing continuous descent and climb operations has the potential to target capacity issues in high-density airspaces while optimizing flight operations to minimize impact on the environment. The underlying research seeks to prove that implementing procedures with vertical profiles positively affects air traffic controllers' workload and, thus, airspace capacity. The research results show that implementing vertical profiles in TMA improved air traffic control efficiency, which was reflected in both a reduction in the total communication time on the frequency and in the decreased number of tasks the controller has to conduct. Therefore, it can be concluded that procedures with vertical profiles can contribute to an efficient utilization of airspace.

2024, Transportation Research Procedia, Amsterdam, Elsevier B.V.), p. 256-265), ISSN 2352-1465

Read-back is a procedure in which a receiving station (flight crew) repeats the received message, or a specific part of it, back to the broadcasting station (Air Traffic Controller) to ensure that the message was received correctly. Incorrect read-back may lead to deviation from the intended clearance issued by the Air Traffic Controller and may only be discovered once the deviation is visible on the radar screen of the Air Traffic Controller. The presented research aims to find methods to design and develop a software tool that would identify wrong read-back in standard phraseology and, notify the Air Traffic Controller. Subsequently, the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) software's success rate and test subjects' capability to identify wrong read-back in an experiment is being tested. Results showed that the first iteration of the ASR system, which has not been modified to the specifics of aviation phraseology, reached a success rate of wrong read-back evaluation of 69,9 %. The lowest success rate was recorded for long and complex route clearances. On the other hand, the incorrect read-back detection by the 50 tested subjects reached 95,6 %. The experiment results show that even with limited financial resources, a reasonable transcription success rate can be achieved, given the rapid advances in computing technology and the development of artificial intelligence. Therefore, in terms of detecting wrong read-back, is Automatic Speech Recognition technology is very promising and can significantly improve air traffic safety in the future.

2023, 2023 New Trends in Aviation Development (NTAD), Praha, IEEE Czechoslovakia Section), p. 217-221), ISBN 979-8-3503-7042-3, ISSN 2836-2756

With the ever-increasing demand for air travel, airspace capacity in the vicinity and relative proximity of airports is reaching its limit. With the progressive development of new technologies and their advancement, industry has reached a situation where it is physically possible to have a large number of aircraft in the airspace. Unfortunately, under current operational conditions, reaching these theoretical capacity values is impossible as it is outside human capability to handle such extreme numbers of aircraft safely and efficiently. This limitation is mainly obvious at peak times when runway and sector capacity is at its limit. This article focuses on the capacity of Václav Havel Airport in Prague (LKPR) and the airspace in its vicinity. It presents a proposal to apply a reduced horizontal separation minimum on the final approach phase of instrument flight rules (IFR) flights down to 2.5 NM. Also, it evaluates the impact of this reduction and describes the necessary changes in airport infrastructure, legislation, and air traffic control unit procedures. The implementation proposal is based on the practices at airports abroad with a reduced 2.5NM spacing already applied. The experiments carried out showed that the idea of reduced spacing at LKPR is feasible and brings an increase airspace capacity while maintaining an adequate level of safety. Under ideal conditions and traffic composition, an increase in the number of aircraft handled by more than 10% per hour can be reached.

2023, Human Factors in Transportation, New York, Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International), p. 539-548), ISBN 978-1-958651-71-1

The work of an Air Traffic Controller (ATCO) involves a constantly changing mental workload and the occurrence of stressful situations to which one must react adequately. Candidates for this profession are expected to demonstrate sufficient resilience and adaptability to such situations already in the selection procedure and during the training process. However, the complexity of Air Traffic Controllers' tasks has increased dramatically in the last decades. A transformation of the ATCO training syllabus was inevitable to ensure the ability of future ATCOs to cope with this changing environment. This change has mainly become apparent in the number of practical skills a trainee has to possess even before initiating the On the Job (OJT) training. Training Organizations are constantly optimizing training processes to prepare a candidate able to withstand challenging situations with varying workloads.To investigate trainees' reactions to increased workload in the context of conducted errors, an experiment was organized examining 30 subjects that participated in a simulator exercise with increasing intensity. The subjects of the experiment were Department of Air Transport students with no particular experience in ATC but considerable knowledge of standards and procedures in air traffic control and familiarity with the simulation environment. It is therefore supposed that the level of skills and knowledge of the subjects are equivalent to student Air Traffic Controllers conducting the basic training. The aim of the experiment was to assess the impact of increased workload, utilizing ECG measurement, on the trainees' performance and subsequent error analyses. The increased workload is achieved by continuously increasing the difficulty of the exercises on the ATC simulator. To analyze, the ECG measurement, data, including R-R intervals, were processed by a short Fourier transform(STFT), filtered and further processed by HRVAS (in Matlab) by time-frequency analysis. Data were processed for Low and High Frequency (individual sympathetic and parasympathetic values). A stress value could be obtained by dividing these two values, which were projectedand plotted against time. Further, error analysis has been conducted, observing 12 categories of errors, including wrong phraseology, application of wrong ATC procedures, separation infringement, and loss of situational awareness. The experiment has shown that the students are prone to conduct mainly errors associated with basic procedures while with time and increasing workload, also errors connected to aircraft separation, situational awareness, and flight efficiency. The results indicate that the most common errors include failure to report aircraft/target identification, failure to confirm ATIS and QNH information for a given airport, descending below the transfer level, failure to respect airspace within vertica