Airspace design process for dynamic sectorisation

Abstract

Air traffic control in core Europe reaches the limits of available airspace capacities. Therefore new roles are introduced to shift workload away from the executive (radar) controller, who operates at the limit and is the capacity bottleneck, towards a more planning oriented but yet adaptive control function, the multi sector planner. This multi sector planner will be responsible for the expeditious flow through several sectors. The new role will execute a set of actions on both, airspace and traffic flows to reduce workload for the sector team or balance workload between sectors, so that overall centre capacity is increased. One of the central support tools is fine-grained, tactical, dynamic airspace management in conjunction with tactical flow measures. The study presents the airspace design process and tools that have been applied for the development of the future airspace of the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, based on the principles of dynamic airspace management.