July 26, 2014 at 00:37Air traffic control - inside view
As I already wrote in the previous hub, I got the work of a programmer in the field of air traffic control and would like to dilute the dominance of mobile and desktop applications and introduce the basics of air traffic control to the Habrovsk people (not to confuse “air traffic control” with “internal affairs control”), some features and tasks to be solved, I hope it will be interesting.
This post will mainly contain a theory that can be read on Wikipedia, Google or read in some book. However, I will try to summarize and clearly show what tasks people and computers have to solve on the ground while you eat the contents of your lunch box at an altitude of 10,000 meters. If you still want to know why this is necessary at all - welcome to cat.
To begin with, planes in the sky fly from point A to point B not in a straight line, which would be shorter, but using the so-called “airways” in the horizontal plane and echelons in the vertical. The airway is a line connecting two navigation points. Navigation points - fixed points on the terrain, represented by coordinates and having their own designation (example of notation: NOVEN, DOBAK, GAGARIN, OKLIT), navigation points can be represented by a beacon (ideal), a landmark on the terrain (also not bad), or simply be selected so that the tracks from it did not pass over a large city or secret military facility. The navigation points and the corridors between them are determined by each specific country and may vary. For, so that the changes in the aeronautical situation become known to airlines, flight controllers, pilots, aircraft autopilots (and Simers), every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published, containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses , input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... once every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published to autopilots of airplanes (and Simers), which contains a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... once every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published to autopilots of airplanes (and Simers), which contains a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... but as practice shows, in short it’s not always cheap. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... but as practice shows, in short it’s not always cheap. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ...
It would seem - which is simpler, filed a flight plan - drove it into the FMS (flight management system) of his plane, turned on the autopilot and relax the whole flight, but no! Time must be taken into account as another dimension. Moreover, the flight time is not the distance between points divided by the cruising speed of the aircraft, it is determined by many factors (the state of the atmosphere (primarily wind and temperature), congestion of departure and arrival ports, congestion of routes and busy echelons, airplane loading, even the mood of the pilot) .
Consider the simplest example, for this we take some large airport, for example Amsterdam (EHAM navigation designation) and suppose that people want to fly to Amsterdam with HabraAvia from Moscow, FogAirlines from Paris and PizzaAgent from, for example, Rome . All airlines wish to carry out their flight right before the MacDakAgent flight departing at 16:00 to New York, providing a convenient connection for transatlantic passengers, at the same time picking up passengers arriving from the ocean from the same side. Of course, he will be able to serve three aircraft at Amsterdam Airport, but what if there are 30 (0) of them? And this is not all, for example, the dispatchers turned out to be sparrows shot and phoned each other, were able to slightly delay the flight from Paris, slightly straighten the route for the flight from Rome (they cannot change the Moscow flight - another area of responsibility), and everyone seems to be happy. But it turns out that the flight from Rome took off with a delay of 25 minutes due to the passenger catching in DutyFree, Muscovites blew a fair breeze, and they arrive 10 minutes earlier, and the flight from Paris flies out on schedule and again the danger that flights or converge on the echelon or fly to Amsterdam at the same time, creating a traffic jam (those who played AirControl on Android will understand), the Paris flight will be delayed and the French will not fly away to look at the Statue of Liberty.
Suppose that the experienced old dispatcher at Amsterdam Airport also coped with this task, the pilots were not fined for running out of fuel, and the flight to New York did not have time to fly out due to the turmoil on taxiways. But that's all, it suddenly turns out that the donor heart of a person who died in a car accident flies from Warsaw by a transport company, such planes have the special label “No Delay, No rerouting” and must arrive just on time or even earlier, in addition to this, the airplane’s route -the heart carrier intersects with the lettering board of the president of Lapland and according to the rules for escorting the lettering boards - he should be on the track alone, and at this time the German Air Force decided to hold exercises and closed some of the tracks at heights "from earth to space", the Czech Republic covered eskers front, and Paris neighbors arranged strike, causing Huge delays.
Still sometimes cows run out onto the take-off field, airplanes have malfunctions, air traffic controllers get sick, pilots have working hours (sometimes even a minute delay in the flight can leave it on the ground for 8 hours - the crew’s rest time), passengers get furious, passengers have heart attacks and much, much more ...
In general, it turns out something like this:
Imagine what this dispatcher will feel like after the end of the working day:
All the events described here - not the fruit of my sick imagination - these are real situations that air traffic control authorities had to face in their daily work. And this is only a small part of what could happen and what should be handled correctly. I will add to this that a little more than 30 thousand flights go through the bowels of the ETFMS in a day, and this number is constantly growing, plus there is the task of emergency recovery in the event of a system failure.
In addition to the task of directly managing and responding to situations, ETFMS also solves the problems of “simulation” and “prediction”. However, the description of these tasks is beyond the scope of this post.
A bit of nirvana:
In the next post, we will consider the list of tools that were chosen to solve the problem and make sure that the tools and people working with them can ensure the smooth operation of the system for many years ...
All the materials presented in this article are taken from open sources. I apologize if I misused foreign words, it is difficult to switch on the go, and for some translation terms I don’t even know.
This post will mainly contain a theory that can be read on Wikipedia, Google or read in some book. However, I will try to summarize and clearly show what tasks people and computers have to solve on the ground while you eat the contents of your lunch box at an altitude of 10,000 meters. If you still want to know why this is necessary at all - welcome to cat.
I want to fly
To begin with, planes in the sky fly from point A to point B not in a straight line, which would be shorter, but using the so-called “airways” in the horizontal plane and echelons in the vertical. The airway is a line connecting two navigation points. Navigation points - fixed points on the terrain, represented by coordinates and having their own designation (example of notation: NOVEN, DOBAK, GAGARIN, OKLIT), navigation points can be represented by a beacon (ideal), a landmark on the terrain (also not bad), or simply be selected so that the tracks from it did not pass over a large city or secret military facility. The navigation points and the corridors between them are determined by each specific country and may vary. For, so that the changes in the aeronautical situation become known to airlines, flight controllers, pilots, aircraft autopilots (and Simers), every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published, containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses , input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... once every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published to autopilots of airplanes (and Simers), which contains a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... once every 28 days, the so-called AIRAC information (Aeronautical Information Regulation And Control) is published to autopilots of airplanes (and Simers), which contains a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... containing a list of all navigation units (points, routes, airfields, lighthouses, input nodes, etc.). In addition, the navigation environment can change in just a few minutes, for example: closing the airspace of Ukraine after the disaster MH17. The airline’s task is to reduce its costs by “straightening” the route, but as practice shows, it’s not always cheap in short. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... but as practice shows, in short it’s not always cheap. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ... but as practice shows, in short it’s not always cheap. Plus, when submitting a flight plan, it is advisable to check if it does not overlap with existing flights. But there are many planes and everyone wants to fly shorter ...
When I want, then I fly
It would seem - which is simpler, filed a flight plan - drove it into the FMS (flight management system) of his plane, turned on the autopilot and relax the whole flight, but no! Time must be taken into account as another dimension. Moreover, the flight time is not the distance between points divided by the cruising speed of the aircraft, it is determined by many factors (the state of the atmosphere (primarily wind and temperature), congestion of departure and arrival ports, congestion of routes and busy echelons, airplane loading, even the mood of the pilot) .
Consider the simplest example, for this we take some large airport, for example Amsterdam (EHAM navigation designation) and suppose that people want to fly to Amsterdam with HabraAvia from Moscow, FogAirlines from Paris and PizzaAgent from, for example, Rome . All airlines wish to carry out their flight right before the MacDakAgent flight departing at 16:00 to New York, providing a convenient connection for transatlantic passengers, at the same time picking up passengers arriving from the ocean from the same side. Of course, he will be able to serve three aircraft at Amsterdam Airport, but what if there are 30 (0) of them? And this is not all, for example, the dispatchers turned out to be sparrows shot and phoned each other, were able to slightly delay the flight from Paris, slightly straighten the route for the flight from Rome (they cannot change the Moscow flight - another area of responsibility), and everyone seems to be happy. But it turns out that the flight from Rome took off with a delay of 25 minutes due to the passenger catching in DutyFree, Muscovites blew a fair breeze, and they arrive 10 minutes earlier, and the flight from Paris flies out on schedule and again the danger that flights or converge on the echelon or fly to Amsterdam at the same time, creating a traffic jam (those who played AirControl on Android will understand), the Paris flight will be delayed and the French will not fly away to look at the Statue of Liberty.
More chaos!
Suppose that the experienced old dispatcher at Amsterdam Airport also coped with this task, the pilots were not fined for running out of fuel, and the flight to New York did not have time to fly out due to the turmoil on taxiways. But that's all, it suddenly turns out that the donor heart of a person who died in a car accident flies from Warsaw by a transport company, such planes have the special label “No Delay, No rerouting” and must arrive just on time or even earlier, in addition to this, the airplane’s route -the heart carrier intersects with the lettering board of the president of Lapland and according to the rules for escorting the lettering boards - he should be on the track alone, and at this time the German Air Force decided to hold exercises and closed some of the tracks at heights "from earth to space", the Czech Republic covered eskers front, and Paris neighbors arranged strike, causing Huge delays.
Still sometimes cows run out onto the take-off field, airplanes have malfunctions, air traffic controllers get sick, pilots have working hours (sometimes even a minute delay in the flight can leave it on the ground for 8 hours - the crew’s rest time), passengers get furious, passengers have heart attacks and much, much more ...
In general, it turns out something like this:
Imagine what this dispatcher will feel like after the end of the working day:
All the events described here - not the fruit of my sick imagination - these are real situations that air traffic control authorities had to face in their daily work. And this is only a small part of what could happen and what should be handled correctly. I will add to this that a little more than 30 thousand flights go through the bowels of the ETFMS in a day, and this number is constantly growing, plus there is the task of emergency recovery in the event of a system failure.
In addition to the task of directly managing and responding to situations, ETFMS also solves the problems of “simulation” and “prediction”. However, the description of these tasks is beyond the scope of this post.
A bit of nirvana:
In the next post, we will consider the list of tools that were chosen to solve the problem and make sure that the tools and people working with them can ensure the smooth operation of the system for many years ...
All the materials presented in this article are taken from open sources. I apologize if I misused foreign words, it is difficult to switch on the go, and for some translation terms I don’t even know.