Working Area 1 – Increased Flexibility of ATCO Validations – En-route

Develops new strategies to reduce the effort required for Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) to obtain and maintain flexibility in unit endorsements on specific or more sectors/sector groups than today in the En-route upper airspace.​

The solution focuses on four key solutions to achieve its objective:
1) Supporting tools for controllers to reduce mental strain in unfamiliar sectors;​
2) Smart Competency Monitoring and Minimum Competency Level Prediction, predicting the required competencies for a more flexible rostering;​
3) Smart Sector Groupings proposing more flexible unit endorsement sector groupings within a service unit;​
4) Common Unit Competence Scheme Framework, establishing a Europe-wide methodology for currency requirements and ensuring safety levels while expanding the number of endorsed sectors for ATCOs.​

By implementing these strategies, the solution supports the European ATM Master Plan and Airspace Architecture Study objectives by:​
1) Enhance Operational Flexibility (enabling ATCOs to be validated on more sectors or sector groups than currently, leading to more flexible rostering and better resource utilization);​
2) Improve capacity management (allowing for more efficient use of existing capacity in en-route upper airspace, which aligns with the objectives of maximizing airspace efficiency and scalability);​
3) Maintain safety and performance (ensuring that safety and human performance levels remain high through smart competency monitoring and standardized validation processes).​

Working area 2 investigates the feasibility of applying known flexible ATCO deployment (IFAV) strategies and enablers in a remote tower centre, and explores new dedicated ideas and concepts, with the ultimate goal of reducing the effort needed per ATCO to get and stay endorsed on different small-size airports.

This will be achieved with simplification and/or standardization, and/or new specific controller assistance systems, and/or changes in training and endorsement practices. The implementation of this solution will reduce training costs and will increase ATCO productivity, while keeping and adequate level of aerodrome capacity, safety and human performance.