have these new procedures released a lot of latent capacity in the airspace or improved safety
Safety: Yes, when the system is operating at max capacity I belive safety is much improved. The reasoning for that has several focuses, but the main one for me is that R/T loadinng on all sectors are greatly reduced. (When using the PMS fully, aircraft get few instructions, because all the vectoring is gone, and because vi can count on a/c performing the turns published inside the merge points, there is less need for step decends for safety.)
Our setup is one Director (DIR) managing the PMS arcs, and one Final (FIN) doing speed control and vectors of BRNAV aircraft once turn and decend from the arc is done.
The R/T call sequenc can be as minimal as:
1.Checkin DIR
2.Reply
3.Turn instruction from ARC
4.Readback
5.Descend instruction and freq. change to FIN
6.Readback
7.Checkin FIN
8. ILS clearence via transition or DCT fix
9.Readback
10. Speedreduction to 180kts
11.Readback
12. Speed reduction to 160kts and freq change to TWR
13. Readback
We estimate that is a reduction of approx 40% from the old vectoring system, which means the controller has more spare capacity.
As for the departures/arrival conflicts, done at the two TMA sectors (east/west), the R/T loading is down as well for the IFR traffic, due to the designs outlined in the video there are less level offs of departures. This is not all down to RNAV and PMS, but some. SIDs can accuratly be turned of the "inside" of arrival routes, closer to the airport, and contineous climb departures are the norm.
I estimate 95% of all jet departures get cont. climb to cruise. (Segregated arrival and departure routes in the AOR was allso part of the redesign)
Staffing:
For the TMA we run one more sector with the same number of people, that says something about the workload. Before the redesign it was very close to becoming unsafe when we operated at max capacity, because of high R/T load and "everthing" on radar vectors. Today we can run more traffic, with no drama at all, and I donīt see the need for adding sectors for some time.
I stated earlier that PMS are not for all airports, and this is where it becomes interesting. Oslo got a PMS system that is a bit to large, and it will be downsized in the 2.0 version. (We often have to shortcut befor traffic reach the system, and to long level flight segments are not popular with the customer. That will be improved, see my "launch customer remark")
One problem when using PMS in the terminal enviroment is that if you make the arcs too big, and/or place them too far from the RWY like we have to a certain degree, you donīt get to save on staffing as much as possible.
For Oslo we had planned to run DIR and FIN bandboxed for more of the time than we do, but has found that the number of trackmiles from entry onto DIR freq to THR can bring to many a/c onto one freq.
But: Since the Arr/dep conflicts are less, we can now bandbox the 2 TMA sectors much more. We could NEVER bandbox them before.
As for PMS on a European level, the use as enroute sequencing tool is interestring, and it is a really good way to merge 2-3 flows of tfc into 1.
The French are going that route I belive.
There are however some factors that you need to get the most out of PMS, at least in the terminal airspace, and the main one is a working automatic arrival manager (AMAN). PMS is great for absorbing short delays, ut på ca 4-5
pr aircraft. It is just as useless as radar vectors if the TMA gets overloaded with aircraft.
http://www.barco.com/barcoview/downl...SYRIS_AMAN.pdf
I know NATS had some issues with their AMAN, but we are fairly happy with ours. They use it a little different to us, but then again it was designed for our kind of use. (We have the same system from Barco, NATS bought our HMI after us, and went live BEFORE we did, that might be some of the problem as well.....)
One the subject of aircraft types that could/should be PRNAV equipped. We used to have less BRNAV customers. The company that flew mail for the national mail service, West Air Sweden had PRNAV for most of their ATPs and all the CRJs. Then they decided to shaft their staff, so they created a new company based in Luxembourg, called West Air Luxembourg, bid on the same mail contract based on lower salaries for the pilots. They won.
Now NONE of the ATPs are PRNAV. And yes, itīs the same airframes! Progress?