Development of Conflict-free, Unrestricted Climbs for a Terminal Area Departure Tool

The Expedite Departure Path (EDP) is a decision support tool being developed at NASA Ames Research Center aimed at providing Terminal Area Radar Approach Control (TRACON) Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) with pertinent departure traffic loading and scheduling information and radar controllers with advisories for tactical control of terminal area departure traffic. One of the proposed features of EDP is to provide departure controllers with the ability to perform unrestricted climbs where procedures typically restrict departures below incoming arrival traffic streams. The potential benefits of this feature include reductions in time-to-climb, fuel burn, and aircraft noise impact to the surrounding communities. This paper focuses on the issue of unrestricted climb in congested terminal areas and describes the modeling and simulation of such climbs. First, flight data of departures in TRACON airspace were analyzed to estimate the level of uncertainties in climb trajectory prediction. Second, the existing Trajectory Synthesizer (TS) module of the Center-TRACON Automation System (CTAS) was modified to generate trajectories that closely model actual aircraft climb profiles and terminal airspace procedures. Third, an algorithm was applied to predict conflicts between trajectories of departure and arrival aircraft and to determine if an unrestricted climb is advisable. Controller-in-theloop simulations were performed to validate the feasibility of the algorithm and evaluate human factors. Lastly, a future application of a conflict probability estimation method for EDP was