IFAV3 is a 3-year SESAR project currently approaching the end of its validation phase and already gathering encouraging feedback from the ongoing activities. The project addresses a well-known operational challenge: qualifying air traffic controllers (ATCOs) for new sectors is demanding, resource-intensive, and time-consuming, placing limitations on rostering flexibility and overall operational efficiency. During the first two weeks of November, the last validation exercise of the IFAV3 project took place in Maastricht.
To respond to this challenge, IFAV3 explores a range of flexible endorsement strategies, procedural approaches, and technical enablers to support a more adaptable deployment of ATCOs across sectors. At the core of this work are the processes smart controller experience assessment and required competency estimation, designed to support more flexible ATCO deployment to upper area control sectors.
Smart controller experience assessment involves the continuous analysis of ATM related data that are already recorded today (e.g. radar recordings) to quantify the concrete experiences an ATCO has gained during recent training and/or daily work, which in turn is an indication of their current competency level.
Required competency estimation includes the analysis of future shifts (e.g. flight plans, weather forecasts, airspace use plan) against a set of criteria to quantify the expected complexity and demand of the ATC tasks within sectors under responsibility of an ACC.
Both processes together can be used to support a rostering process that always ensures that the ATCO is experienced enough for the ATC tasks that can be expected during their shift in a specific sector and supports a deployment of ATCOs to sectors with a shorter, but always sufficient training. This in turn allows a more flexible allocation of resources based on the demand, significantly improving cost-efficiency in air navigation services by lowering training costs, while maintaining airspace capacity, safety and human performance.
Validation activities in the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre
The last validation exercise conducted in IFAV3 was led by DLR and took place from 04 – 13 November at Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre’s (MUAC’s) Training Simulator.
The huge advantages of MUAC as validation exercise location for this trial activity are realistic controller working positions the ATCOs already know by heart, with real MUAC sectors available, and realistic traffic scenarios are accessed.
The participants, 19 ATCOs, ran several simulations initially on their ‘home’ sector where they are endorsed for, then on ‘unknown’ sectors for which they do not hold an endorsement, and finally, as assessors, on their ‘home’ sector again.
A simulated assessment according to the current operational process was done during the validation, and will already provide first insights if the assessed ATCOs are already competent enough for the ‘unknown’ sectors, and under which conditions. This will be compared with an automatic experience monitoring algorithm, combined with a required competency prediction algorithm developed by DLR with strong support from MUAC, which is intended to enhance the ATCO deployment process in the future by making it more flexible.
Looking ahead
As the project reaches the end of its research phase, the insights gained during this final validation campaign, and the ones already completed, will inform the next steps. Detailed results, analyses and lessons learned will be shared through publications, conferences and social media, contributing to the broader discussion on how to reshape ATCO deployment in a smarter, evidence-based and operationally more efficient way.
