In a bid to ease the current congestion crisis, the Civil Aviation Authority has awarded Logica’s London-based Communications and Electronics division with a UKP250,000 contract for the construction of an air traffic simulator. The system will enable the Authority’s staff to select and monitor changes which could be made to control systems and existing methods of air traffic management, by simulating the flow of aircraft over the UK. The model can define different air traffic scenarios, and can simulate and follow the flight path of individual aircraft from the time they submit take-off plans, through to the time they land. Users feed data, based on real life flight plans, into the simulator, and then juggle with a number of different parameters – the number of runways in operation and the number of aircraft handled by different sectors – to set up available air space. The system then provides a visual run through of the flight plan, and records the data subsequently used for assessing the impact produced by the changes, against a number of performance factors – the location and size of bottlenecks, and the extent of delays in take-off times, for example. The system will be run on the top-of-the range Apricot machines currently used by the aviation authorities’ scientists, and should be fully installed by the middle of next year. Although a number of similar models are available in the US, Logica claims that it is the only company in Europe to offer a simulator designed to meet the exacting demands – and deadlines imposed by UK and European aviation groups and airways.
