Subliminal ATC Utilizing 4D Trajectory Negotiation

In enroute sectors, a large part of the workload of air traffic controllers consists of anticipating aircraft trajectories in order to determine whether a loss of separation is likely to occur. On the European Union funded ERASMUS program, we introduce an automation concept which aims to alleviate this workload by early ground-based intervention, separating potentially risky traffic before this traffic becomes one that a controller would start to actively monitor. In this paper we discuss the technology used during the transition phase (2011-2020) towards the implementation of this automation concept, in the areas of airborne 4D trajectory prediction, ground-based Conflict Detection and resolution (CD&R) and datalink technology. We discuss the requirements for a complete implementation as well as the potential benefits.