The Federal Aviation Administration is working to modernize the systems used by air traffic controllers through the agency's vision of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. These systems are acquired through the FAA's Acquisition Management System (AMS) process. To date, human factors analysis is included in this process, though improvements can be made in the alignment of human systems integration principles with these systems engineering processes. This paper provides a recommended human systems integration framework to support air traffic management system design, and examines two potential cases in which the framework can be used to support the process.

This paper describes the infrastructural deficiencies at some non-towered airports, identifies the resulting operational impacts, and briefly explores the use of Integrated Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance (ICNS) capabilities as an improvement mechanism. The purpose is to inform the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) decisions regarding the creation of a more efficient and streamlined National Airspace System (NAS).The inefficiencies at non-towered airports can be attributed to the coverage gaps in surveillance and communication in the vicinity of the airport that limit the type and number of services that can be provided by Air Traffic Control (ATC). The result is adverse impacts to operations, framed as shortfalls, in the following categories: flight delay, extended flight paths, and safety. A rough order of magnitude estimate is provided in operational terms (e.g., delay minutes, minutes of excess flying time, fatalities) for each shortfall, leveraging current flight data, surveillance data, and safety data. In conclusion, this paper describes the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the analysis and discusses the application of this analysis to non-towered airports throughout the NAS.

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In this paper we describe the use of visual demonstrations (both still images and videos) to aid air traffic control subject matter experts (SMEs) in estimating the required performance characteristics for a surface surveillance system. The demonstrations focused on performance characteristics of location accuracy, orientation accuracy, latency, and update rate. The demonstrations were aimed to increase validity of performance characteristic estimates by allowing SMEs to visualize the consequences in an airport surface context. Still images were created to show the impact of surveillance error for aircraft location and orientation by depicting an opaque aircraft location on a satellite image and using ghost images to depict error. Videos of aircraft moving on and around the airport surface were created to show how surveillance with a specified latency or reduced update rate would appear. These demonstrations influenced the value and variability of performance characteristic estimates, relative to initial discussions without visual demonstrations. The visual demonstrations also increased the consensus and confidence that the team had in the estimates. The distinct advantage of the visual demonstrations is that they elicited performance characteristics estimates that were more valid than simple verbal discussions of values, while being less expensive and faster than full human-in-the-loop simulations.

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