Author(s)

Tan Wei, Sheng Minmin, Wu Qian

Corresponding Author

Tan Wei

ABSTRACT

With the rapid growth of civil flights in China and the increasing saturation of airspace units, the importance of air traffic flow management (ATFM) has become more prominent. During a typical flight life cycle, from initial planning to in-block at the gate of destination airport, there are some crucial moments that require special attention, such as start-up, take-off, boarding, etc. Under the framework of collaborative decision making (CDM), these significant events during the planning or operation of a flight- milestone- will trigger the decision making process for downstream events and influence both the further progress of the flight and the accuracy with which the progress can be predicted. The national ATFM system shall collect, share and make use of the milestone information. The Air Traffic Control (ATC), airports, airlines and other stakeholders shall bear respective responsibilities during this process. This paper describes the definition, application scenarios and interrelationships of some key milestones that have great influence on ATFM during tactical phase of operation. It also analyzes the milestone-related sequence algorithms and explains the common confusion of stakeholders. It’s aiming to facilitate the ATFM process in a more collaborative and efficient way.

KEYWORDS

Air traffic flow management, milestone, collaborative decision making, air traffic control