Aerodrome Controller’s decision support for the approval of UAS operations

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) may means potential benefit for airport operations but at the same time, they pose risks when interacting with manned aviation. Airports as potential sites for drone operations have been examined from several perspectives. Many of them in Europe and the United States are in use as test sites, and 10 years ago, a civil-military joint-use airport in Afghanistan allowed drone operations alongside with the civilian and military traffic. In both cases, the safe operation of unmanned and manned flights were solved by procedural separation - in the first case by designating a Special Use Airspace over the airfield dedicated for UAS flights, in the second case a safe distance was defined from a navigational reference point together with runway closure that served as a guarantee of separation. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) considers UASs and their remote pilots as airspace users who should implement and apply the same rules and procedures that manned aviation does. At the same time, their management means high risk due to the lack of separation standards and procedures for air traffic control services. Our research focuses on the controlled aerodrome environment, within which we aim to develop a system to support the Aerodrome Controller (Aerodrome Controller, also referred to as Air Traffic Control Officer ATCO) decisions to issue clearances at an integrated model airport.