Designed For More Precise Aircraft And Airspace Monitoring

SkyLine-X, developed in partnership with Airways New Zealand, is to be showcased at the World ATM Congress in Madrid last week. A collaboration with Kazaeronavigatsia, the ANSP of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to implement SkyLine-X was announced at this year's event.

The SkyLine-X Air Traffic Management solution incorporates more precise aircraft and airspace monitoring, trajectory-based operations, encrypted voice and data communications and weather planning integration, enabling easier information sharing between airports, airlines and an ANSP.

Incorporated into SkyLine-X is Time-Based Flow Management (TBFM) technology which has already shown to boost capacity. TBFM, in use at eight of the world's ten busiest airports, enables controllers to monitor arriving aircraft at metering points outside of the airport's Flight Information Region. TBFM provides flight crossing, delay absorption time recommendations and speed advice, enabling pilots to make smaller adjustments earlier in the flight, lessening the need for no-notice holding and vectoring, reducing delays.

The integration of the FAA Medium Term Conflict Probe (MTCD) capability into SkyLine-X enhances air safety and efficiency. This controller decision support tool is an enabler of Trajectory Based Operations (TBO), providing outlooks for potential conflicts against active trajectories which are continually updated from a full range of sensor technologies.  Trajectory models that include restrictions provide a reduction in false alarms and reduces controller workload.

SkyLine-X also features an innovative Human Machine Interface (HMI), giving it a modern look and feel that is built through a collaborative process with operational controllers and user experience experts.  This provides a highly intuitive and efficient approach to air traffic control. Drawing upon operational user interface concepts and inherently understood iconography, controller acceptance and training time are significantly decreased. The easy to use interaction model coupled with a highly configurable User Interface allows customers to shape the SkyLine-X HMI to their needs.

"Airspace and airports are only getting busier, and SkyLine-X enables a vision for a completely seamless Air Traffic Management organization working on a single system to support en-route, terminal, tower and Oceanic control," said Xu Qian, Program Management Director – International ATM. "Leveraging over $500M of investment working with our partner ANSPs, Skyline-X delivers a system that is both highly resilient and scalable, realises a lower cost of ownership, improves safety, and supportability."

"Airways is pleased to be developing Skyline-X in collaboration with Leidos," said Russell Ambrose, Chief Technology Officer at Airways New Zealand. "It will play a vital role supporting our teams to deliver more resilient, flexible and efficient air navigation services to our customers. Key to supporting those improvements will be Skyline-X's intuitive and accessible HMI interface, dual channel architecture, TBFM, data-linking, and the ability to integrate our oceanic, domestic approach, enroute and tower functions into one system.

"This successful partnership model previously saved Airways' customers around $2.6 million per year or $36 million across the life of our current ATM platform. We look forward to continuing to deliver long term savings to our customers through this successful and innovative partnership model."

(Source: Leidos new release)

FMI: www.leidos.com