Future air traffic management: strategy and control philosophy

The aim is to explore the philosophy of air traffic management with different strategic visions of the future: to answer the key question: 'Who is to prevent mid-air collisions and how are they to accomplish this?' The best strategic vision may just be the one that has the best match with the consensus on the desired strategic direction. Nevertheless. it must satisfy the main safety, financial, human performance etc. constraints. To explore the question, a blend of concepts from a range of disciplines has been used. These include risk analysis, financial decision-making, 'cognitive engineering' research and simple cybernetics. 'full delegation' - with pilots being responsible for all the tasks related to separation assurance - appears to meet most of the constraints. Some important issues for safety analyses of full delegation are sketched. Research into the nature and rate of future conflicts in a full delegation environment, using models of error processes, is crucial.