24th Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 29 August-3, September 2004, Yokohama, Japan
Paper ICAS 2004-8.1.2 (I.L.)

TRANSFORMING THE NAS: THE NEXT GENERATION AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM

H. Erzberger
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA

Keywords: air traffic control, automation, air traffic management, aircraft operations

In the proposed next-generation system design, the Advanced Airspace Concept (AAC), computer logic on the ground monitors aircraft separations and uplinks modified trajectories when potential conflicts between aircraft develop. During flight, pilots can downlink requests for trajectory changes to the ground system; their requests are revised by the ground system only as necessary to eliminate possible conflicts and to comply with other control system restrictions.

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