Safety control structure analysis of intersecting air routes in CNS/ATM

As the fast growth of air traffic flow around the world, collision risk of intersecting air routes is still and even more important an issue nowadays. This is because the frequency of aircraft pair flying over intersecting air routes increases dramatically as the growth of air traffic flow. Besides, the new generation air traffic management systems (NGATMS) are set to work in Europe, China, United States and many other countries. These new systems exploits new facilities such as communication, navigation and surveillance in particular, and the corresponding operation principles, which are reformulated by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA), which makes many new factors out of the scope of traditional collision risk analysis for intersecting air routes. Aimed at this problem, this paper builds a hierarchical collision safety model for intersecting air routes with the application of Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP), which is a safety analysis method based on system engineering point of view thus multiple heterogeneous factors in NGATMS could be covered. Furthermore, safety control actions are identified, which could be a solid foundation for further causal factors analysis and quantified data acquisition.