Atm initiatives on reduced separation minima

Current Separation Minima (SM, i.e. minimum distances aircraft need to fly apart from each other at all times to ensure safety) were defined in the late 1940s for en-route and in the 1970s for airport operations, based on expert judgment and technology available at the time. Despite the subsequent gigantic leap in technology, only a few SM have been modified on the grounds of modern technological capabilities (e.g. RVSM). Conversely, the main challenge for the current ATM system is to manage the air traffic demand increase expected over the coming years. According to forecasts such as the STATFOR 2006 Long-term forecast, demand in Europe is expected to double by 2020. RESET (Reduced Separation Minima) is an European Commission co-financed project developed by a consortium formed by 14 companies led by Aena. Airports, Air Navigation Service Providers, Industry, Universities and Research Organizations are represented in the consortium. The RESET aim is to identify what reductions in SM could be achieved to meet the following challenging goal: "Where feasible, reduce SM so that they contribute towards enabling a safe factor of 2 traffic growth over Europe". RESET is aiming to get an appropriate process on the rails which systematically works on safe reduction of separation minima where this is needed to accommodate traffic increase that is addressed by SESAR in Europe and NEXTGEN in the USA. This paper will present the approach followed by the project RESET to modify current separation minima standards maintaining or even improving safety and efficiency. The project is at its initial phase and for this reason, only few results are available at the time this paper is being written. The steps presented next should be understood just as a very high level overview of the project, which does not represent the totality of the activities considered within it. Only the first steps are addressed in more depth within this paper.