Viability of the Use of Aircraft-generated Intent Data for Air Traffic Management

As air navigation service providers (ANSPs) move towards trajectory-based operations (TBO), the use of aircraft-provided information is increasingly viewed as a relied-upon capability. The expected benefits from the use of extended projected profile (EPP) information in Europe has been cited as a major driver for aircraft and ground equipage. However, early trials using EPP intent information, while showing some promise, also highlighted areas where usage may be more problematic (e.g. shifting estimated times of arrival windows, Top of Climb/Descent, etc). This also coincides with studies on aircraft intent data performed at Boeing using data from both revenue flights and high-fidelity aircraft simulators. Providing information on the data types, their use in the aircraft, and therefore the data generation algorithms will assist ground system providers in integrating such data into their tools and capabilities. While aircraft intent information such as EPP and other data directly from avionics are definitely useful in enhancing ground trajectory calculations and predictions, there are a number of critical areas that must be further understood in order take full advantage of this data. This includes, at a basic level, an understanding of how the aircraft is being flown, how the avionics manages control of the aircraft, the purpose of the intent data produced on the aircraft (which is different from the purpose of use on the ground), what the aircraft and avionics are doing (or have recently done) at the time that the reported data is obtained prior to downlinking, and how all of those conditions relate to the data provided. These all have an impact on the quality and accuracy of the aircraft-provided data, and a ground system using this data must take these factors into account on an individual aircraft basis in order to arrive at a useful interpretation of the data. This paper will detail different types of information from aircraft that are both currently available and expected to be available in the near-to-mid-term. It will also discuss how flight management computers (FMCs) calculate and use information to control the aircraft, and how that data and its usage differs from how ground systems generally interpret that data. There will also be considerations given on how aircraft-provided data is used by ground systems, and for what purposes (e.g. can the data be used for separation). Finally, analysis and results citing real-world and aircraft simulator data from work done both internally at Boeing as well as from referenced external sources will be given. These will identify various situations that illustrate how interpretations of aircraft data may be misconstrued without some knowledge of the conditions under which the data was generated. The conclusions