Safety of New Flight Operational Concepts

Closely-Spaced Parallel Runway Operations using Required Navigation Performance (RNP)

Mike Ulrey

Boeing Advanced Air Traffic Management

Abstract

The demand for world-wide air transportation capacity has generally been increasing. There is a concern that the current air traffic management systems will be insufficient to meet the demand at some point, and that economies of related industries in particular, and the global economy in general, will suffer. Many technologies have been developed that can help alleviate the problems, but only if they are used to enable new flight operational concepts that break many of the current paradigms of air traffic control that are based primarily on procedural control, ground surveillance radar, and voice-based communication. 

One particular operation that can benefit from improved navigational technologies, based on GPS, are aircraft approaches to closely-spaced parallel runways. However, such operations will not be permitted unless they can be proved as safe or safer than operations using current procedures and technologies. This presentation will focus on a methodology, implemented in Mathematica, that helps close the required safety case. We will highlight the progress made since the basic idea was first presented at the Advanced Mathematica Summer School in June 2009.