Tower and airport simulation: flexibility as a premise for successful research

Commercial air transport has been growing steadily over the last decades and the demand often exceeds the capacity of the air traffic system. Simulation facilities are required in order to improve the performance and usability of assistance systems aiming at air traffic optimisation and to study the interaction of human operators with their working environment. Unlike training simulators, simulation environments for research and development purposes must comply with continuously changing requirements. The simulator must be flexible and scalable to permit adaptation to the specific goals of a simulation. To guarantee successful work in the future a simulation equipment must be capable to attend in distributed simulations. Since the Apron and Tower Simulator of the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance became operational in 1998 a number of different projects demanded this flexibility.