Pioneering Air Traffic Control Simulations “Pave the Way for eVTOL Operations”

The impend­ing green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion has tak­en anoth­er step for­ward, fol­low­ing the UK’s first major air traf­fic con­trol sim­u­la­tions for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM), demon­strat­ing how eVTOLs will short­ly be safe­ly inte­grat­ed with con­ven­tion­al air traf­fic, reports a press release.

These sim­u­la­tions are the lat­est mile­stone for the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium, a group of lead­ing avi­a­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and trans­port organ­i­sa­tions, pre­sent­ing the com­mer­cial and oper­a­tional via­bil­i­ty of AAM. The con­sor­tium is a Future Flight Chal­lenge pro­gram joint­ly fund­ed by UK Research and Inno­va­tion and includes Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Vir­gin Atlantic, Atkin­sRéalis, Sky­ports, NATS, Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult, Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty and WMG – Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick.

The tri­als are an impor­tant step before the consortia’s planned real-world demon­stra­tion flight in late 2024 and lay the ground­work for a new gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric air­craft being com­mon­place in the skies.

The air traf­fic con­trol ser­vice, NATS (for­mer­ly Nation­al Air Traf­fic Ser­vices and now NATS Hold­ings Ltd),  suc­cess­ful­ly sim­u­lat­ed eVTOL flights from Bris­tol Air­port through the air­space around Farn­bor­ough Air­port, and then on to Lon­don City Air­port. The flights oper­at­ed along­side tra­di­tion­al air traf­fic and in con­trolled air­space with­out any impact on con­ven­tion­al oper­a­tions. The pio­neer­ing sim­u­la­tions were made pos­si­ble with a com­bi­na­tion of new pro­to­type tech­nolo­gies and the cre­ation of a new ‘Air­space Man­ag­er’ func­tion.

The release explains, “Under NATS’ pro­posed con­cept of oper­a­tions, each eVTOL oper­a­tor would file their flight plans via an appli­ca­tion, which would then be approved or amend­ed as required. The whole flight would then be entire­ly decon­flict­ed from oth­er air­craft before even tak­ing off, with the ‘Air­space Man­ag­er’ func­tion mon­i­tor­ing the air­space from a dig­i­tal ‘mas­ter con­trol room’.”

It con­tin­ues, “Direct voice com­mu­ni­ca­tion between eVTOL pilots and air traf­fic con­trol would only be required by excep­tion, and while the Air­space Man­ag­er func­tion was ful­filled by a per­son dur­ing the sim­u­la­tions, it could one day be almost entire­ly auto­mat­ed.”

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NATS believes this pro­posed con­cept forms the best bal­ance between ensur­ing safe­ty and pro­vid­ing air­space access to new users with­out adding to the work­load of air traf­fic con­trollers or pilots.

Richard Ellis, New Air­space Users Direc­tor at NATS, com­ment­ed, “We are excit­ed to demon­strate this world lead­ing capa­bil­i­ty show­cas­ing how Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty vehi­cles can safe­ly and dig­i­tal­ly inte­grate at scale with­in the exist­ing crewed oper­a­tions at major air­ports. These sim­u­la­tions are a big step for­ward and we look for­ward to mak­ing it a real­i­ty in the near future.”

Anna Post­ma-Kurlanc, NATS Project Lead, remarked, “Our skies are already busy, so we are going to have to find new, inno­v­a­tive ways of man­ag­ing and inte­grat­ing this new gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric air­craft. Safe­ty is always going to be our first pri­or­i­ty, and the air­space man­ag­er func­tion and new tech­nolo­gies we’re devel­op­ing as a con­duit between the eVTOL oper­a­tors and tra­di­tion­al air traf­fic con­trol, is going to be vital.”

She added, “We know how impor­tant it is to decar­bonise avi­a­tion, and we believe what we’ve done here sets a very strong foun­da­tion upon which we can con­tin­ue to build in the com­ing years.”

And James Rich­mond, Head of AAM at con­sor­tium lead­ers Atkin­sRéalis, said, “These sim­u­la­tions are a crit­i­cal mile­stone on our roadmap because they pre­pare us for the live demon­stra­tions we plan to con­duct in late 2024. The con­sor­tium is show­ing how dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers across the indus­try need to col­lab­o­rate to cre­ate a future avi­a­tion ecosys­tem that adapts to chang­ing pas­sen­ger behav­iour and main­tains the UK’s lead­ing posi­tion in the future of avi­a­tion.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.futureairmobility.com/

https://www.nats.aero/

https://www.atkinsrealis.com/

(Top image: NATS)