Why Air Traffic Control?

Air traffic forecasts are normally based on passenger demand and economic factors, under the assumption that there is no limitation in the air traffic system itself; however, it is obvious that there are constraints limiting the expansion of the number of flights. The number and duration of delays, especially during peak hours (estimated at a cost of 2 billion dollars annually) show that the ATC system and the airports are not always able to cope with the demand. This growing air traffic increases the possibility of accidents and requires more sophisticated techniques for its management. An approach is needed that can support the design of user interfaces satisfying both usability and safety requirements.

Air Traffic Control is an important application area for European industry, and one in which many problems are still to be solved. For example, several air traffic control incidents have occurred because of the undesired effects of interactions of operators or the lack of efficiency of current systems, which ends up by wasting time both for air traffic controllers and for pilots.

The air traffic controllers' main task is to ensure flight safety with an efficient, secure and ordered air traffic flow. We can distinguish two main categories of air traffic flow: the en-route and the approach traffic. Each airspace sector is managed by a team of two or three air traffic controllers who must collaborate with each other and with pilots. This class of application represents a challenge for those involved in the specification, design and development of user interfaces. Formal methods offer a promising technique because they are based on the use of notations with precise semantics and make it possible to reason about properties of the application specifications and to predict the performance of the future Interactive System.