Using Segmented Standard Taxi Routes to Integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Civil Airports

Cargo airlines and other aircraft operating agencies are interested in commercially exploiting and benefiting from the technical possibilities provided by unmanned aircraft systems. Use cases could be long-range unmanned air transport, flight calibration, or surveillance missions. It is natural that, depending on weight and size, unmanned aircraft are going to use the existing ground infrastructure together with manned aircraft. However, it is also a well-known fact that remotely piloted or automatic / autonomous unmanned aircraft do not have the same abilities and behavior as manned aircraft. There is a need to achieve a safe, orderly and expeditious flow of a mixed traffic constellation even when more than one unmanned aircraft are involved in aerodrome operations at the same time. Unfortunately, due to a lack of international standardization and regulation, it is still unknown which abilities a commercial unmanned aircraft will have. This makes it very difficult to define operational procedures. In the frame of the SESAR 2020 project `Surface Management Operations' (SuMO), a procedural concept for ground movements of unmanned aircraft together with manned aircraft was elaborated. This concept uses so called segmented standard taxi routes and aims at realizing mixed traffic with an equal level of safety compared to pure manned traffic as well as very low system requirements for unmanned aircraft systems. In November 2017, this concept was validated together with tower controllers, conventional pilots, remotely piloted aircraft operators and an air traffic management expert from the German Air Navigation Service Provider DFS in a gaming workshop over several days. The validation covered departures, arrivals and non-nominal situations like C2 link loss or lost communication. Results showed that this concept likely allows a fast and easy integration of unmanned aircraft systems. It was rated as very practical, realistic and acceptable in terms of safety, human performance and the key performance areas access and equity as well as interoperability.