Some New Potential ASAS Applications in the Terminal and En Route Domains

This paper documents new Airborne Separation Assistance System (ASAS) applications for consideration by the ASAS community for further analysis and development. It identifies several potential applications of the information displayed on a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) which may substitute for direct visual contact with a particular airplane of interest. CDTI assisted “visual” separation (CAVS) may provide operational efficiency in the terminal area under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) that could approach that of pure visual operations in visual meteorological conditions (VMC). If proved feasible IMC CAVS applications would provide significant capacity benefits in the terminal domain. Several CAVS applications are presented, including CDTI based spacing during instrument approaches (IMC CAVS) to single and parallel runways and departure spacing during high demand departure operations (Departure CAVS). The document describes the problems associated with holding patterns in the National Airspace System (NAS) and postulates an evolutionary ASAS application of ADS-B based spacing and separation for reducing ATC workload during holding and improving the spacing accuracy out of holding patterns. The paper also includes description of an application of merging and spacing for departures. The proposed applications include a need statement citing examples from current NAS operations, and conclude with a brief application description. It is recommended that these proposals be analyzed in greater detail to determine their NAS-wide benefits and feasibility.