The introduction of Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) is set to change the operation on all levels of Air Traffic Control (ATC), including aerodrome control. Here, adherence to a planned four-dimensional trajectory is important to achieve a stable operation. At the same time, this concept provides possibilities for support tools to be used in ATC, by making use of new data and information. This research presents the Take-off Timing Support Tool (TTST) for aerodrome control, and more specifically runway control, at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It is incorporated into the already existing Electronic Flight Strip System and features a time axis on which flight strips can be placed. By dragging departures along the time axis a planning and sequence can be constructed, while taking into account the provided solution space to prevent conflicts. An experiment conducted with the TTST showed that professional air traffic controllers used the information from the tool in their decision-making, leading to a decrease in conflict count, and it was demonstrated that a stable planning could be established. Therefore, the TTST is a suitable platform to support TBO in aerodrome control and assists air traffic controllers with time-based control. No significant difference in departure interval was present. The workload did increase moderately.

The joint management of airspace by human controllers and automated agents is gaining prevalence in nextgeneration Air Traffic Control (ATC). In such settings, human controllers are challenged with maintaining situation awareness while dealing with intricate and often opaque automated technologies. This study probed the potential of a concept interface, which augments traditional radar displays, to facilitate human controller-automation teamwork. With visual explanations and interactive elements, it intended to make the control behavior of automated agents transparent and comprehensible to human operators. The primary objective was to explore whether features from a non-conventional design could offer insights for designing interfaces for highly automated ATC operations. The concept was tested in a prototype-based user experience evaluation with static traffic scenarios, involving 15 active air traffic controllers from the Maastricht Upper Area Control Center. Results indicated that the visual explanations of the interface enabled controllers to comprehend the plans and reasoning underlying automation’s behavior. A significant correlation between controllers’ evaluations and their attitudes toward novel technologies underlines the influence of pre-existing beliefs about automation on the acceptance of new interface tools. Future research is warranted to streamline parts of the design and further investigate the interface’s capacity for explaining automation’s actions in dynamic, real-time scenarios.

The Dutch Air Traffic Control has implemented fixed approach trajectories within approach control during night operations when traffic density is low. During the day, when traffic density is higher, vector-based operations are used. The Dutch Air Traffic Control aims to implement fixed approach trajectories when traffic density is high. This shift from the current vector-based operations will allow aircraft to perform a continuous descent and fly around inhabited areas, reducing the emissions and noise. To improve the capacity of the landing runway in strong headwind conditions, time-based separation is envisioned. Separating aircraft on time will result in a constant runway capacity in all wind conditions. However, to make these changes possible, additional decision support tools are required to assist controllers and reduce their workload. This paper discusses the use of a new toolset, centered around a time-space diagram which shows the expected arrival time and distance-to-go to a selected reference waypoint. Results of an experiment with eight professional air traffic controllers show that the added tools allowed future conflicts to be solved sooner and with fewer instructions. Aircraft followed the fixed approach trajectories better in the latter stages of the approach when compared to current vector-based operations. Although a slight increase in runway capacity was observed with the new toolset, it was not statistically significant. The workload of the controllers did not show a difference when using the new toolset. In conclusion, the added tools enabled the controllers to combine fixed approach trajectories with time-based separation. However, to reduce perceived workload, future designs should aim to integrate the time-space diagram on the main radar screen such that controllers do not need to switch attention between screens.

Future ATM systems will rely on automation to make operations more efficient. Creating insight into the inner-workings of automation, also known as agent transparency, is expected to play an important role for effective human-machine collaboration. This research proposes an ecological approach to increase agent transparency in automated rerouting for en-route traffic. For the purpose of this study, an ecological interface for the rerouting task, developed in a previous study, was visually augmented with the constraints guiding the behavior of an experimental path-planning algorithm. This was done in two different ways: a top-down and bottom-up approach. The top-down approach starts at the goal of the system and subsequently adds information related to the physical implications, while the bottom-up approach has the reversed order. The design was tested in a human-in-the-loop experiment with ten participants. Results show that higher levels of transparency significantly increased actual and perceived understanding of the agent’s decisions. Furthermore, the top-down approach performed significantly better in questions related to the strategy of automation, while the bottom-up approach was found more useful for making predictions about the agent’s rationale for making certain decisions. Future research should investigate how agent and domain transparency could be combined and should test situation awareness in addition to understanding of automation. Additionally, because only static situations were investigated in this study, the effects of a dynamic work domain featuring various time-critical situations should be analyzed in future research.