En Route Descent Advisor Multi-Sector Planning Using Active and Provisional Controller Plans

As decision support tools are developed to support controllers in complex air traffic control environments, new approaches to maintaining situation awareness and managing traffic planning must be developed to handle the ever-increasing amounts of alerting and advisory data. Within high-density metering and other environments where flight path changes are the rule, not the exception, and where interactions between these changes are required, current trial planning approaches are limited by potential increases in workload. The Enroute Descent Advisor (EDA) is a set of decision support tool capabilities for managing high-density en route traffic subject to metering restrictions. The EDA system s novel approach builds aircraft plans from combinations of user intent data and builds controller plans from combinations of aircraft plans to effectively maintain situation awareness during traffic planning. By maintaining both active (current) and provisional (proposed) controller plans, EDA supports controllers in coordinated traffic planning both within and between sectors. Ultimately, EDA s multi-sector planning approach will facilitate a transition from current sector-oriented operations to a new trajectory-oriented paradigm, enabling new levels of efficiency and collaboration in air traffic control.