The pilot advisor: assessing the need for a procedural advisory tool

One objective of the small aircraft transportation system (SATS) higher volume operations (HVO) project is to increase the capacity and utilization of small nontowered, nonradar equipped airports by transferring sequencing and separation responsibilities to general aviation (GA) pilots supported by a ground based automated airport management module (AMM) (Abbott et al., 2004), The AMM sequences traffic into the self-controlled area, a newly defined volume of airspace around a SATS airport. ADS-B, broadcast among participating aircraft, would provide the data necessary for informing the pilot of aircraft position and display that traffic on a multi-function display (MFD). An important aspect of the concept included tools that would aid the pilot in self-separation tasks, flying within a containment area along the approach path and alerting the pilot to potential conflicts. Interactive communications between aircraft and the AMM were displayed via dynamic messaging windows, one of which was the pilot advisor (PA). This paper discusses the experiment designed to determine the utility of the pilot advisor in self-separation.