Thank you to those who have taken the time to look at my site. BDiONU, I don’t think The New Model is really that similar to iFACTS. I have seen the reports from the FACTS work and I am aware of the background to the interim implementation. Is Rob W still responsible? For those that don’t know the work there’s a good outline at:
Airport International iFACTS Article
The New Model differs in that conflicts are eliminated by the system as soon as they are detected so that only the best conflict-free RT advisories are presented to the controller. There are therefore no windows to look at and evaluate and no problems to solve. I have tried to explain the logic behind this on my website.
Lon More, yes, there is an overlap between Eurocontrol’s work and mine but did you see the illuminating quotes on the first page of my site? I have a lot of support from individual researchers whose names I must be discrete about. My apologies if my assertions are controversial. I just hope we are all searching for improvements to the system and that my ideas are a useful contribution to a public debate. Controllers are emailing me from as far away as the USA and Australia.
And Scott Voigt, as for Free Flight, I think it was a worthy proposal that failed because there was no credible evolutionary path by which its final goals could be reached. It depended on too much changing at once. I actually favour a ground-based ATC concept but that’s a discussion for another thread. The New Model can be implemented within a single sector or across a whole ATCC and the aircraft need never know. Therefore there is an obvious evolutionary path to the future with the New Model.
As a final thought for this post I believe that the new imperative for ATC (after safety) is to show that traffic is being handled optimally from an environmental point of view. That means that trajectories must now be planned and continuously adjusted by computers to minimise CO2 emissions. In the UK the train drivers and the firemen handled the transition from steam to electric and diesel traction rather poorly and our railways have been a disaster ever since. I have confidence that present day air traffic controllers will want to manage the transition to automation more competently.