Design and evaluation of NextGen aircraft separation assurance concepts

Design of viable separation assurance concepts is a key research issue for NextGen. All concepts robust to weather perturbation in the presence of 3x current day traffic. Combination of situation awareness, workload, and system performance data suggest all concepts are workable and deserve further study for integration with other NextGen concepts (e.g., TBO). Results emphasize importance of automation design principle of involving operator in the decision-making loop. Pilot-Primary Concept (pilots kept actively engaged "in-the-loop" with separation assurance) motivated pilots to maintain involvement during descent phase, leading to better performance than Automation-Primary and Controller-Primary Concepts.