Why new streamlined Heathrow arrivals start in Europe

A new era of sharing information between air navigation service providers on a world view aviation intranet has opened up a world of possibilities for more predictable, fuel-efficient and environmentally sensitive flights. One of the first beneficiaries will be airlines flying into Heathrow.

350 miles from Heathrow, a pilot complies with an instruction from an air traffic controller who is sat in a control centre in Maastricht in the Southern Netherlands. The pilot makes a slight adjustment to the airliner's flight management system to lose a few knots of airspeed. There is nothing unusual in this – except the aircraft's speed is being reduced, not because there is traffic to negotiate in the surrounding airspace, but because by slowing down now this will considerably save time, fuel, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions on its approach into London Heathrow.

It is part of a pioneering collaborative air traffic management procedure, called Cross Border Arrivals Management (XMAN), and is part of a broader FABEC and UK-Ireland FAB project aimed at implementing Extended Arrival Management for airports within and close to FABEC airspace. It has been developed by NATS and partnering air navigation service providers (ANSPs) within the Single European Skies ATM Research Programme (SESAR). For years NATS has been researching new ways to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the need to direct aircraft into holding stacks before they can be sequenced to land at Heathrow. With XMAN and other new procedures and technologies under development, the days of holding stacks are well and truly numbered.

After only a few months in service XMAN has demonstrated that by absorbing just one minute during the en-route sector of the flight, called "linear holding", – rather than in an orbital holding stack – aircraft can reduce CO₂ emissions by 15,000 tonnes a year. Everyone gains from XMAN. As well as lower costs and a reduced carbon footprint for airlines, XMAN gives airports a greater degree of predictability on when flights will arrive. This means better connections and more time to make sure there's a terminal gate free and a catering truck ready to go as NATS implements a number of new procedures aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions by 10 per cent by 2020.

The procedure seems simple enough but the technology behind it is truly complex. Once the forecast delay for Heathrow reaches seven minutes, NATS' Harris Orthogon arrivals management system (AMAN) automatically estimates the arrival time of incoming aircraft, and neighbouring ANSPs slow the inbound flight, by up to Mach 0.04, to streamline their approaches into Heathrow.

The information is sent to neighbouring ANSPs where the optimum speed can be shown in a label on the controller's surveillance display. Around 40 per cent of the traffic flying into Heathrow passes through airspace managed by the Maastricht Upper Airspace Centre (MUAC), which also handles flights descending to and climbing from Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam and other busy airports, all of whom will be expanding XMAN procedures in the next few years.

This new way of sharing flight information and linking it with optimisation tools to match capacity uses System Wide Information Management (SWIM) enabling technology. SWIM will allow immediate sharing of information between ANSPs, Airlines and Airports, no matter where they are in the world. NATS are leading the way on the development of SWIM enabling technologies. By adding new user interface tools to current systems it will give certified users the opportunity to share detailed information about the status of flights no matter where in the world they may be. With XMAN, NATS are at the forefront of bringing SWIM concepts into daily operations – making flying more predictable, with fewer delays while lowering fuel bills and emissions for airlines and reducing aviation's overall carbon footprint.