Air traffic control
AssigneeNats (En Route) Public Limited Company
InventorsMelodi Irfan, Michael John Bull, Andrew Trevor Clinch, Stephen James Pember
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An air traffic control system in which several tactical sectors each control of a respective tactical controller can be amalgamated into a single super-sector under control of a single planning controller. The tactical controllers can collaboratively manage flights in neighboring tactical sectors within the same planning sector and have awareness of selected flights and interactions outside their own tactical sector; the invention assesses and selects which flights to display for each controller (based upon separation responsibility).
Claims21
An air traffic control system, for use by a plurality of controllers controlling a plurality of aircraft, comprising
- a plurality of workstations each comprising a processor, an input device and a display device, said plurality of workstations comprising
- at least one planning controller workstation for use by a planning controller, and
- a plurality of tactical controller workstations each for use by a respective tactical controller;
- and
- a control computer in data communication with each workstation of the plurality of workstations,
- said control computer stores sector mapping data mapping a plurality of tactical sectors to a combined sector, and is arranged to allocate one planning controller workstation to each combined sector and one tactical controller workstation to each tactical sector,
- said control computer is arranged to filter and transmit to each said tactical controller workstation interaction data for display, wherein each tactical controller workstation is operable to display:
- first aircraft interactions between a first plurality of aircraft predicted to occur within the tactical sector allocated to that tactical controller workstation, and
- second aircraft interactions between a second plurality of aircraft predicted to occur in other tactical sectors within the combined sector to which that tactical sector is mapped if each said second aircraft interaction involves at least one aircraft currently under responsibility of the respective tactical controller of the tactical controller workstation, and
- said first aircraft interactions comprising predicted future close approaches between members of the first plurality of aircraft and said second aircraft interactions comprising predicted future close approaches between members of the second plurality of aircraft.
An air traffic control system, for use by a plurality of controllers controlling a plurality of aircraft, comprising:
- a plurality of workstations each comprising a processor, an input device and a display device, said plurality of workstations comprising
- at least one planning controller workstation for use by a planning controller, and
- a plurality of tactical controller workstations each for use by a respective tactical controller;
- and
- a control computer in data communication with each workstation of the plurality of workstations,
- said control computer stores sector mapping data mapping a plurality of tactical sectors to a combined sector, and is arranged to allocate one planning controller workstation to each combined sector and one tactical controller workstation to each tactical sector,
- said control computer is arranged to filter and transmit to each said tactical controller workstation interaction data for display, wherein each tactical controller workstation is operable to display:
- first aircraft interactions between a first plurality of aircraft predicted to occur within the tactical sector allocated to that tactical controller workstation, and
- second aircraft interactions between a second plurality of aircraft predicted to occur in other tactical sectors within the combined sector to which that tactical sector is mapped if each said second aircraft interaction involves at least one aircraft currently under responsibility of the respective tactical controller of the tactical controller workstation,
- said first aircraft interactions comprising predicted future close approaches between members of the first plurality of aircraft and said second aircraft interactions comprising predicted future close approaches between members of the second plurality of aircraft, and
- said system is arranged to allow each said tactical controller to retain control of an aircraft after it leaves their respective tactical sector and enters that of another said tactical controller within the combined sector to which both tactical sectors are mapped.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.