Back in the early 70s I was the vice-president of the Hungarian Air Traffic Controllers’ Association (HATCA) and we were busy searching for a good slogan for the association. In the end, we decided to use an adapted version of the slogan put out by the Canadians: “Air Traffic Control means you will have a safe flight”. The HATCA version became: “Air Traffic Control – Your safety in the air”.
Many many years later, when I was working in the airline Project Coordination Platform supporting the SESAR definition phase I introduced the idea of the “business trajectory”. This term referred to the trajectory defined by an airline, the one they wanted to fly and which best expressed their business intentions in relation to the flight concerned.
While the airlines really liked the idea, there was an immediate outcry from the controllers involved in the definition phase. How could I mention the term “business” in the same sentence with trajectory and air traffic control! ATC was there to ensure safety and business had nothing to do with it.
Recalling my time as HATCA president, I did not blame them. After all, when we were looking for the logo, we too highlighted safety as the aim of ATC and the word “business” did not cross our minds. We did this in spite of the fact that ICAO has been saying right from the start that the aim of air traffic services was to maintain a safe and efficient flow of air traffic.
Of course a lot has changed since then and while the importance of safety has not diminished, the relative importance of efficiency has grown tremendously. It is not an exaggeration to say that safety and efficiency are equally important if this industry is to survive. Concentrating mainly on safety is not enough by far… Our thinking must change so that the terms “safety” and “business” may coexist peacefully in our minds.
While the awareness to maintain safety is generally high in the ATM world, the business aspect still tends to be considered a necessary evil, even an affront to people anointed, after all, to uphold safety.
Everyone in the ATM value chain must contribute to the efficiency of the operation, air traffic controllers included. This is something more and more recognized in towers and ops rooms the world over but it is still interesting perhaps to highlight the relationship of ATC with safety and efficiency respectively to get a better picture of what we are dealing with here.
At the risk of further damnation from certain quarters I will venture to say that ATC’s relationship with safety is indirect. Just think of the procedures, the separation norms, the phraseology, etc. that we use every day. These are per definition safe with many an hour spent by the experts on ensuring that if the procedures and so on are adhered to, the operation concerned will remain a known quantity and it will evolve safely. No controller needs to recalculate whether 3 miles separation as such is safe… If its use has been authorized, you can rest assured that it is safe to do so. Of course there are always cases where this indirect relationship between controller and safety becomes more direct and split second decisions are needed to decide what to do and whether that will be safe… but this is, luckily, the exception more than the rule. At most times, safety is ensured by doing things that have been established by others as safe.
Looking at efficiency, it is easy to see that the controller is handicapped by a lack of knowledge about the business aspects of the flight concerned while his actions have an immediate and direct impact on its efficiency. Too early descent, longer vectors, 5 miles separation instead of 3 and so on (while all safe) will distort the trajectory in ways never intended by the airline. This is where the need to be aware of the business aspects of flying, the fragility of the whole enterprise and the facilities of the controller enabling him or her to be both safe and efficient come together.
Controllers everywhere need to keep in mind at all times what the business trajectory represents. It is not just any flight path but the one carefully selected by the airline as being the best possible flight path in the circumstances. True, the airline may not have been aware of all the constraints (although with better information management on the horizon this will be less and less the case) but any change to the trajectory needs to be done in a way that results in a minimum of distortion. Here is another term to get used to. Distortion. This is a change to the business trajectory not induced by the business considerations of the airline but some other requirement. Distortions are inevitable but they must be kept to the minimum. This is true also for distortions required for separation provision reasons. May sound strange but in the future 4D environment, even an unsolicited “direct” will be seen as an unwanted distortion.
It is evident that the controller’s quality of work has a direct influence on the efficiency of the operation.
We must remember also that while safety infringements carry the specter of punitive measures, inefficient vectoring or other unnecessary trajectory distortions, when they happen, are just part of a day’s work. I am not saying that any controller will mindfully work inefficiently. But I have seen many cases where he or she did so simply because he or she did not know better or just did not care. Being safe was the only target in their minds.
The air traffic control element of ATM is very safe world-wide. There have been very few accidents as a result of controller error. This is due to the safety culture that is ingrained in every control organization and the very high awareness of the need for safety in the mind of every single controller. Sensitivity to the business aspects of a flight is less pronounced and plodding the skies you do notice lapses in this respect. Enough of them in fact so that you thank your luck it is happening with efficiency and not safety.
But there is no reason why this should be so. Training and recurrent training emphasizing the essence and importance of the business trajectory, an understanding why changing that trajectory is seen as a distortion by the trajectory owner (the airline…) easily imparts the required knowledge of and sensitivity to this vital aspect of flying. Sometimes the problem is higher up where management will not defend the need for efficient operations against the demands of city fathers or rich villa owners, resulting in procedures that are anything but efficient. The understanding of the business trajectory concept needs to spread high and wide in all ATM organizations.
Of course after the initial consternation, the term business trajectory became a part of the SESAR Concept of Operations and its significance and life-cycle as we defined it is being worked into SESAR’s (and I may add NextGen’s) details. The genie is out of the bottle. It is a good genie but it needs to permeate our thinking and lead to the realization and acceptance that while safety remains paramount, airline business efficiency is right alongside it.