ABSTRACT
Introduction Air Traffic Management (ATM) is in a period of major change, with a variety of new concepts under consideration to help air traffic controllers cope with projected increases in traffic levels. New technology will enable considerable changes to older methods of operation, and automation to help the controller is now widely acknowledged to be one of the only ways to meet future capacity demands. Automation, or cognitive support tools, in aviation has been subject to increasing investigation and analysis over recent years, particularly since the introduction of glass cockpit systems. In ATM, full automation is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future, but automation of some functions has been introduced since the 1960s, for example flight data gathering and processing (e.g. radar data processing and flight data processing) and conflict alerting. This trend is continuing with tools such as Electronic Flight Strips and Final Approach Spacing Tools. In the future, communication tools such as datalink and decision support tools including ‘risk’ display tools and conflict resolution tools may be implemented, and perhaps changes to the way that ATM goals are achieved, such as free flight, time-based separation and increased delegation of controller tasks to the pilots.
