ABSTRACT
Over the past few years, the aviation community has begun to recognise the growing need for updating the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. The system itself has largely remained unchanged over the past two decades and has been effective in coping with the increases in traffic ‘year after year’. However, the ability of the system to process aircraft movements and the pressures placed upon the air traffic controller has almost hit its threshold level. A number of projects are being initiated that will help support the controller and reduce their workload. One way of freeing-up controller resources is to reduce the amount of RT (radio / telephone) time that the controller has to devote to each aircraft. A number of projects are underway to develop future ATM systems and this paper looks at a specific example of one of these projects.
