AIRCRAFT CONFLICT RE SOLUTION TAKING INTO ACCOUNT CONTROLLER WORKLOAD USING MIXE D INTEGER LINEAR PRO GRAMMING

In order to successf ully cope with the projected traffic growth, new air traffic management concepts, like free flight, need to be developed. This paper presents a mixed integer programming approach towards aircraft conflict detection and resolution within such a free flight environment, taking into account controller workload considerations. The hypothesis is that the air traffic controller workload is reduced and the situation awareness is increased when the number of aircraft involved in resolving a conflict is minimised. This minimisation is compared with a baseline optimisation, where the sum of the heading changes is minimised, using an air traffic management metric called Dynamic Density. The developed algorithm shows a reduction in air traffic controller workload.