How does endurance depend on re routing

Air Traffic Control

Air Traffic Control

Lexical domain

Problems linked to fight plan

delays, slots, flight plan updating, computer breakdown, no flight plan, flight plan conformity, flight plan processing, search and rescue, type of flight plan

Re-routing/ diversion

approach charts, procedures, routing, endurance, weather, airport installations, ground services, aircraft breakdowns

Airmiss(es)

Air traffic rules, avoiding action, trajectory / flight path, speed, distance/range, aircraft characteristics, position

Aircraft proximity + pilot complaints

conflict situations, traffic load, aircraft characteristics, flight profile, weather conditions, injuries, distance/range, pilot manoeuvres, rules, procedures, avoiding action

Collisions

airframe, structural damage (glass, metal, etc.), response to controls, debris, airport installations, ground services, relief/high ground, weather conditions, aerodynamic behaviour

Aids for VFR flights

instrument panel, on-board equipment, pilot rating, flight plan, local place name, visual landmarks, positions, directions, endurance, aircraft breakdown, weather problems

ATC system breakdowns

ATC equipment/systems, radar display, radar performance, radio operation, previous messages, relaying messages, actions to repair, delays/duration, telephone lines

Not all controllers are in the tower

Beyond the Tower: The Controllers That Guide You the Rest of the Way

By: Eddie Trujillo

Almost without fail, the question I get immediately following, “What do you do?” is, “Oh, so you work at the tower?” I’ve been a controller for nine years now, and no, I’ve never worked at a tower. I actually work in a big windowless building, nowhere near an airport. While the question irks some of us, it’s easy to see why it’s asked so often: The tower is one of the most recognizable landmarks of the flying experience. Of course the mainstream media almost never gets it right. Any time the news talks about ATC, we are referred to as the “controllers in the tower.” And the alternative misconception, that we are the crews on the ramp marshaling aircraft with the orange sticks, is no better. Let’s see if we can start clearing up just what we do as air traffic controllers.

ATC That You Can See

When you’re at an airport waiting for a flight, you can see all the hustle and bustle going on outside the windows – aircraft landing, departing and taxiing to and from the ramp. There are even other vehicles speeding about all the time. Every one of these is handled by people in the control tower. Even before your plane starts pushing back from the gate, the pilots are in contact with controllers, relaying information back and forth about their flight plan and taxi instructions to the runway.

Finally, with some patience, your pilots hear, “Cleared for takeoff.” The engines of your airplane roar to full power, you get pushed back in your seat, the rumble of the concrete suddenly becomes silky smooth and off you go. Everything beneath you becomes much smaller…and then what? It’s a big sky and the pilots have a flight plan, so they know where to go, right? Sixty years ago that may have been possible, but it is certainly not anymore. The airspace is far too busy and the airplanes far too fast for pilots to go it alone these days.

The National Airspace System (NAS)

On any average day, there are over 5,000 aircraft operating in the skies over the United States under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). All of these flights are required to be controlled by ATC at all times in order to ensure proper separation with other aircraft. Flying IFR allows travel through clouds and adverse weather that can reduce visibility. There are countless more aircraft operating under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) that may or may not be getting ATC service. Visual rules puts separation responsibility solely on the pilots, so they are required to fly clear of weather and look outside the windows for other traffic.

Control facilities are divided up into three types (or environments): Tower, Terminal, and Enroute. All three come in different sizes and acronyms. An air traffic control tower (ATCT) can be anything from a small glass box on top of a mobile home to a dizzying three hundred foot obelisk at the center of a major international airport. Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facilities vary as well, from small single-screen operations that can be run within a tower cab to extremely complex “Large TRACONs,” which can encompass several busy airports. The third and biggest, the Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), can handle traffic across multiple states and even huge chunks of ocean.

You can almost envision the three by thinking of the Interstate highway system between crowded cities. The airports are the busy, crowded cities. Terminal Approach Control airspace would be the interchanges, on and off ramps, and smaller highways in close proximity to the city. Finally, Enroute would be the long expanses of highways themselves, stretching cross-country.

The On Ramp (Terminal Approach Control)

So, back to our original story. What happens after your airplane leaves terra firma? After a short climb and maybe a turn or two, pilots are told to contact departure, one of the primary functions of a Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility. A TRACON typically encompasses an area of airspace within 40 miles of a primary airport, up to 10,000 feet or a little higher. Departure controllers climb and turn aircraft on their way out of the TRACON’s airspace towards the Enroute Center (more on that below). Approach control is very tactical, working with small airspace with many aircraft within. It takes a lot of rapid, yet accurate decision making to keep things safe, orderly, and expeditious.

Along with departure, TRACON controllers also work arrival and satellite traffic. Arrival is responsible for funneling and blending multiple streams of aircraft into single file lines in order to land. If you are near an airport and see a long line of lights off into the horizon, the “string of pearls,” you are seeing the result of an arrival controller’s work. Being able to guide aircraft from several different directions into a steady, consistent final approach takes expert timing and precision. “Pearls” are a source of pride for any approach controller.

While arrival is generally touted as the top of the food chain, satellite operations can often be even more difficult and complex. Satellite airports are scattered all around, and even though a TRACON usually only has one primary airport, these other fields also need air traffic control service. Chicago Midway, Dallas Love, and Fort Lauderdale are all satellite airports to their larger counterparts, but still have abundant traffic. With the bulk of the nearby airspace being dedicated to the primary airport, satellite is usually reduced to lower altitudes and smaller corridors of airspace, making things a bit tricky.

So here we are, climbing above 10,000 feet. Departure has vectored your flight through the web of arrival traffic flows, and on course to your destination. The departure controller instructs you to “contact center.”

Highways and Byways (Enroute Center)

Image courtesy Federal Aviation Administration

The network of enroute centers is the backbone of the National Airspace System. There are twenty two ARTCC facilities in the United States, responsible for air traffic control service up to 60,000 feet over huge expanses of area. Some even handle oceanic operations over the Pacific and Atlantic. Each facility is staffed by roughly 250-350 controllers, weather specialists, traffic management coordinators, technical support staff, and many others.

The center is the grand master of all airspace and, ironically, is the least visible to the flying public. As your flight reaches its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, you look outside and it feels like you’re all alone in a sea of blue. Appearances can be quite deceiving, however. Watch outside long enough and you can see other aircraft zip by, only 1,000 feet above or below you. Contrails can stretch for hundreds of miles in any direction. The sky can be very busy.

The enroute controller, in contrast to approach, works in a “strategic” or “big picture” method. The aircraft travel much faster at altitude, but since the airspace is so much broader, the traffic picture appears to move more slowly. Traffic separation is often maintained with small moves over longer distances, for example, instead of more drastic turns that are quite common in the Terminal environment.

Centers also get to handle a lot of extracurricular activity, including air refueling, large military aircraft movements, training areas, search and rescue, research flights, and so on. As you fly along, you could pass over a group of Air Force fighter jets refueling from a KC-135 Stratotanker. Beneath them could lie a stack of holding airliners, waiting to get into Atlanta. It all blends together with the horizon out your window, but it’s all clearly visible to the Center’s radar.

The Off Ramp to Town

After passing through a few ARTCCs, it’s time to descend. The center controller clears your aircraft for a lower altitude. They place you into one of four or more arrival streams for your destination. “Contact approach,” and the process begins to reverse. Arrival blends your stream with the others, gets everyone in line, and clears the planes for their final approaches. Nearing the end of your voyage, after a couple thousand miles and a few dozen skilled controllers, your airliner is a shining pearl in the sky. One after another, with two and a half miles of in-trail spacing between them, they contact the tower, where the last few controllers will guide them the final few miles.

“Cleared to land.” The main gear screeches on the concrete below, the engines roar again with reverse thrust to slow down your craft enough to exit the runway. As soon as the plane clears, another is touching down within seconds. The local controller constantly ensures that only one aircraft is coming or going at all times. Now you can see a swarm of airplanes outside the window. The delicate choreography between controllers in the tower and the pilots below keep everything moving swiftly. Before long, you see the jetway attach and your voyage has been completed safely. One voyage out of thousands that have occurred that day.

Eddie Trujillo has been an FAA Air Traffic Controller for nearly a decade. He has been at Chicago TRACON since 2010, and prior to that spent five years at Memphis ARTCC. He is a loving husband, a father to three girls, and a proud #AvGeek. Follow Eddie on Twitter @trujilloea.

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Read the full article on NYC Aviation

The remote tower

London City is to become the first UK airport to replace its air traffic control tower with a remotely operated digital system.

Instead of sitting in a tower overlooking the runway, controllers will be 120 miles away, watching live footage from high-definition cameras.

The new system, due to be completed in 2018, will be tested for a year before becoming fully operational in 2019.

It has already been tested in Australia, Sweden, Norway and Ireland.

The technology has been developed by Saab, the Swedish defence and security company, and will be introduced as part of a £350m development programme to upgrade London City Airport.

It will also include an extended terminal building, enabling it to serve two million more passengers a year by 2025.

The remote digital system will provide controllers with a 360-degree view of the airfield via 14 high-definition cameras and two cameras which are able to pan, tilt and zoom.

The cameras will send a live feed via fibre cables to a new operations room built at the Hampshire base of Nats, Britain’s air traffic control provider.

As well as being able to see it, controllers will be able to hear the airport, as if they were in situ.

Unlike the old tower, the new system will allow controllers to zoom in for a better view and put radar data onto the screen to track aircraft.

BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott says a critical new safety feature means the cameras will be able to pick out rogue drones near the airport, as well as light the runway at night.

Read more on the BBC

Controllers and Pilots communicate

Why did this aircraft re-route?

I was looking through my ADSB Virtual Radar outputs couple days ago and saw a weird re-route for one of the aircraft that looked out of place.

Can one of the pilots/ATC guys pitch in to help me understand what may have caused this A/C to do this? Is this «normal»?

I would expect if this was a wake turbulence from A/C ahead they would have just asked the rerouting A/C to just slow down?

1 Answer 1

Its hard to tell from the picture, but assuming you are talking about the yellow airplane and the «wiggle» in the course, that was probably just an S-turn for spacing. Sometimes the controllers don’t get the spacing exactly right, or one airplane slows down early and messes things up. In those cases, in visual conditions, the controller can ask the following airplane to make an S-turn. This causes the plane to take a bit more time to cover the same distance as flying straight and spaces the planes out.

This may be used instead of a speed assignment for a number of reasons

An ATC instruction may assign a heading and follow up with a new heading and approach clearance or other instructions to join final, or they may simply ask for an «S turn to the right for spacing». The vectors would be more likely in instrument conditions and the S-turn more likely in visual conditions.

Does endurance include the fuel reserve time?

I have been wondering if endurance time actually includes the fuel reserve time?

Therefore is the endurance time 5h 15mins, or 4h 45mins?

2 Answers 2

Endurance is the length of time the aircraft will fly for a given set of conditions. There is no reserve fuel built into aircraft or their designs, because there’s no constant definition of reserve.

The reserve is defined by the pilot/captain/law depending on the circumstances, and is simply defined as the extra fuel/endurance required in addition to the expected mission requirement.

The answer to your question is that, based on your fuel burn you have 5hr 15minutes endurance. If you need 30 minutes reserve, then the longest you can plan to fly is 4hr 45 minutes

Endurance time probably does include reserve time, though this is not made a specific stipulation as per ICAO Annex 2, Annex 6 nor in Doc 9976 (Flight Planning and Fuel Management).

Based on the nature of your question, where you give an example, I presume you are concerned about flight planning.

Sections 4.16-4.26 of ICAO Doc 9976 outline pre flight planning for fuel but does not define fuel endurance. Neither does Annex 2 and 6.

None the less, the best interpretation of all of this is that it would make sense that endurance does include reserves, it lets ATS know when the aircraft will continue to fly with its engines running. Also ‘complete’ fuel endurance (including reserves) is good for emergency dead reckoning crash site location estimations.

So let the ATS know via flight plan or booking out that your endurance fuel is 5hr 15 mins

ENDURANCE

Смотреть что такое ENDURANCE в других словарях:

ENDURANCE

[ɪn`djʊər(ə)ns]выносливость, способность переноситьпрочность, стойкость; сопротивляемость изнашиваниюдлительность, продолжительность

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

endurance: translationSynonyms and related words:abidingness, acceptance, age, antiquity, application, assiduity, assiduousness, bulldog tenacity, chan. смотреть

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

стойкость, выносливость, сопротивление усталости [износу]* * * 1. стойкость; усталостная прочность; выносливость 2. срок службы; долговечность; продол. смотреть

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

<ınʹdjʋ(ə)rəns>n 1. выносливость, стойкость; терпеливость, долготерпение

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

endurance [ınʹdjʋ(ə)rəns] n 1. выносливость, стойкость; терпеливость, долготерпение

ENDURANCE

n1) тривалість (польоту)2) термін служби; робочий ресурс3) витривалість [міцність] у льотній експлуатації•- endurance of flight- flight endurance- fuel. смотреть

ENDURANCE

1) выносливость2) выдержка3) усталостный4) <engin.> автономность корабля5) износоустойчивость6) выживание7) временной ресурс8) стойкость9) износо. смотреть

ENDURANCE

endurance: übersetzungendurance ■ The body’s ability to exercise for a prolonged period with minimal fatigue. Ausdauer f ■ Fähigkeit, bei lang anhalte. смотреть

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

f1) выносливость; терпеливость, выдержка; стойкость; закалка épreuve d’endurance — автогонки на выносливость2) срок службы (конструкции) 3) ресурс (дви. смотреть

ENDURANCE

выносливость; усталостная прочность; долговечность; стойкость- fatigue endurance- fire endurance- heat enduranceАнгло-русский строительный словарь. — М. смотреть

ENDURANCE

f1) усталостная прочность; выносливость; стойкость 2) срок службы (конструкции) 3) ресурс (двигателя) •- endurance à la fatigue

ENDURANCE

f 1) выносливость; терпеливость, выдержка; стойкость; закалка épreuve d’endurance — автогонки на выносливость 2) срок службы (конструкции) 3) ресурс (. смотреть

ENDURANCE

• Biathlete’s trait • Lasting power • Marathoner’s trait • Mountain climber’s need • Part of a Car and Driver rating • Stamina • Type of test • The po. смотреть

ENDURANCE

n 1) витривалість; терплячість; стійкість; довготерпіння; it is past (beyond)

це нестерпно; 2) міцність; довговічність; 3) зносостійкість; 4) випробування; знегоди; 5) мор. дальність плавання; 6) ав. тривалість польоту. смотреть

ENDURANCE

endurance: translationThe time an aircraft can continue flying, or a ground vehicle or ship can continue operating, under specified conditions, e.g., w. смотреть

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

выносливость, способность переносить (боль, страдание и т. п.); прочность, стойкость; сопротивляемость изнашиванию длительность, продолжительность (attr.) endurance test испытание на долговечность. смотреть

ENDURANCE

выносливость; сопротивление усталости; стойкость- heat endurance* * *срок службы

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

выносливость (в физике прочности), долговечность, усталостная прочность

ENDURANCE

n1) витривалість, терпіння2) тривалість3) міцність, стійкість

ENDURANCE

выносливость, сопротивляемость, стойкость* * *сопротивляемость

ENDURANCE

выносливость- folding endurance

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE

n 1. витривалість; терплячість; стійкість; довготерпіння 2. міцність; довговічність

ENDURANCE

m англ. многокилометровое моторалли / авторалли Итальяно-русский словарь.2003.

ENDURANCE

термін дії (або чинності) endurancee punishmentenduranceing injury to health

endurance training

Термины в модуле (25)

2. The ability to sustain a physical activity, perform repetitive submaximal contractions, or exert a force for a prolonged period

3. Individual Differences Principle

— More work of training is needed to make the same gain.

2. Variation Principle
— vary the intensity and volume of training

1. This is another endurance test you can use to predict your VO2max.

2. You require a stopwatch and a 400m track.

3. Run or walk continuously for 12 minutes. Try to maintain a constant pace throughout. Note the total distance covered and use one of the following formulas to predict your VO2max:
— For distance in Yards.
0.0206 x yards covered minus 11.3

— For distance in Meters.
0.0225 x meters covered minus 11.3

2. The test is excellent for multi-sprint sports such as soccer and rugby and it allows testing for an entire team simultaneously.

3. The test involves running 20 meter shuttles. The test is split into a series of 1-minute levels. Each level consists of a number of bleeps that dictates the pace at which each 20 meter shuttle must be run. As the levels progress the bleeps become quicker and more frequent so a greater number of shuttles has to be completed inside 1 minute.

2. The test has since been used as a performance-based measure of functional exercise capacity in other populations