Major Asia-Pacific Airports Gather in Kunming to Promote ICAO A-CDM
By Maggie, China Aviation Daily | Apr. 19, 2017
On April 19, Seminar on Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and First Meeting of the Aerodrome Collaborative Decision Making Task Force (A-CDMTF/1) of International Civil Aviation Organization(ICAO) were held in Kunming Yunnan. Experts from more than 30 countries, delegates from major Asia-Pacific airports, and over 100 delegates from Civil Aviation Administration of China(CAAC), Air Traffic Management Bureau, and some Chinese airlines and 10-million-passenger airports attended this meeting. This meeting in China not only shows ICAO's recognition on China's A-CDM airport collaborative work, but also aims to formulate and update A-CDM international standards and arrange the promotion and implementation of A-CDM in Asia-Pacific airports in next phase through the seminar.
In 2014, Air Traffic Flow Management(ATFM) was determined through ATFM coordinating group's draft and ICAO's initiation. According to Asia-Pacific Seamless Air Traffic Management Program formulated by ICAO APAC, ATFM would be implemented in all flight information regions by 2018 to improve capacity, and it is identified that both ATFM and A-CDM are important modules in this program. ATFM is a program based on network to improve flow efficiency and capacity matching and diminish delays. A-CDM aims to optimize airport operation. As an important member of ICAO APAC, China strongly supports the implementation of this program.
According to CAAC's statistics, there are 218 airports in China, including 216 general aviation airports with regular flights. The total flights amounted to 4.67 million flights in 2016, representing an increase of 9%; passenger traffic amounted to 102 million, representing an increase of 11%. Chinese civil aviation industry keeps a rapid increase. However, another group of statistics shows that rapid Chinese civil aviation development's contribution to GDP is lagging behind by international level. According to ATAG's statistics, GDP created by air transport industry account for about 3.4% of the global GDP. If air transport industry was regarded as a country, its GDP would rank the 21st place around the world. In 2014, air transport industry created 28.8 million jobs and a GDP of US$626 billion in Asia-Pacific, which reflects the air transport industry's contribution to regional economy. From 1978 to 2015, the average growth rate of China's GDP was 9.7% while air passengers recorded a growth rate as high as 17% during the same period. In 2015, China's nominal GDP reached US$10.8 trillion, accounting for 14.7% of the global economy. For the same period, China's air passenger traffic accounted for 12.6% of the global air passenger traffic, which is lower than the GDP's proportion. Moreover, China has provided 18.92% of Asia-Pacific's labor, while it only produced 14.07% of the area's GDP. These reflect the problems of low level of high technologies and large proportion of low-added-value industries.
Additionally, the growth rate of Chinese hubs' flights remains low among all the busy airspaces. New York, Pearl River Delta and Chicago are the busiest airspaces around the world that the annual flights exceed 1 million flights. Los Angeles International Airport and Tokyo International Airport, the annual flights of which have exceeded 0.4 million, recorded an increase of 10% and 12% on flights in 2016, respectively. However, China's hubs -- Beijing Capital International Airport, Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport -- only recorded a growth rate of 2.86%, 6.98% and 6.24% on flights, respectively.
Figure 1: A 3D figure for real-time flight track in Pearl River Delta Airspace
One significant reason of Chinese large airports' low flights increase is that these airports do not have a good on-time performance. Thus the ground and air operation efficiency could not match flights' rapid increase. ICAO APAC has formulated an A-CDM theory and implementation manual for Asia-Pacific based on American and European collaborative decision making experience, aiming to improve air-ground efficiency and airport's capacity. This manual would be amended from time to time according to all nations' civil aviation reality. In China, A-CDM, based on information sharing, would focus on collaborative decision making between air traffic controllers, airlines and airports to improve each supporting link's efficiency through delicacy management on airport ground operation with the support of Big Data and AI. A-CDM would also provide air traffic controllers with accurate and instant ground support information to help them arrange flights in a reasonable manner according to the airspace situation. Airlines could make use of these data to offer more accurate estimated departure and arrival time, avoiding conflicts resulted from opacity of information. It is learned from Chinese airports' experience that A-CDM has been playing a significant role in improving flight safety and air-ground efficiency.
Figure 2: Air control CDM and airport A-CDM improve air-ground efficiency in China in a collaborative manner
Kunming Changshui International Airport is the first domestic airport adopting this concept. During the implementation process of A-CDM, new technologies such as vehicle positioning, electronic auto chock and intelligent video analysis are widely used to improve the ability of automatic data collection, data analysis and intelligent decision. Hence the airport's operation efficiency was significantly enhanced. In December 2014, Changshui Changzhun A-CDM system was officially put into use. In 2015, Kunming Airport was ranked top for on-time performance in China for a consecutive period of 11 months. In 2016, despite the fact that the passenger traffic of Kunming Airport up 11.9% to 41.98 million(5th in China) and annual flights up 8.5% to 0.326 million(4th in China), its on-time performance was ranked the 2nd place among the 10 largest domestic airports.
Yunnan Airport Group has identified four stages for A-CDM's development. The first stage is monitoring: all aircraft and vehicles on airport ground are monitored; data is transferred to A-CDM in a single-direction way and AOC could comprehensively learn the airport's resources and make reasonable analysis. The second stage is interaction: data and communication links for supporting resources such as vehicles and personnel are interconnected; AOC manages and controls the supporting resources on the ground and supporting resources could interact with each other; CDM data could be shared with air traffic control department to share data with associated airports. The third stage is plan: resources are arranged in an intelligent manner, and safety conflicts are minimized and utilization efficiency of resources is improved; to make decisions according to the system's recommendation provided there are safety conflict alerts; data is automatically revised with CDM and HCC. The fourth stage is guidance: operation of ground resources is wholly managed by A-CDM in an automatic manner; to establish a dedicated team for data maintenance and algorithm improvements, ensuring the continuous improvement of A-CDM intelligent process; vehicles and personnel are managed by A-CDM system; to share data with pilots through air-ground data link. Kunming Airport just completes the first stage of A-CDM and is trying to complete the second stage. The on-time issue and capacity issue would be released after 10-million-passenger airports' completion of the second stage.
Figure 3: Visual A-CDM dynamic monitoring for airport apron in Kunming Changshui Airport
With the support and encouragement from CAAC, A-CDM has been adopted by 32 airports by the end of 2016, the passenger traffic of which accounts for 40% of the total traffic. A-CDM is being built in more than 11 airports, the passenger traffic of which accounts for more than 31% of the total traffic. Currently, all of China's 10-million-passenger airports such as Pudong Airport and Hongqiao Airport have already adopted or prepare to adopt A-CDM to improve airport's operation efficiency. It is estimated that in 2018, there would be more than 100 major Chinese airports using A-CDM system to provide passengers with safer, more efficient and more comfortable services.
In this A-CDM Seminar & TF/1 Meeting of ICAO, there are not only experiences of A-CDM in China shared by CAAC, China Eastern Airlines, Air Traffic Controllers in Eastern China and Yunnan Airport, but also implementation and development tendencies introduced by experts of ICAO and A-CDM's implementation status in Japan and Singapore shared by each nation's experts. The meeting in Beijing would be beneficial to the promotion and implementation of A-CDM in Asia-Pacific airports, further deepen information sharing and cooperation between Asia-Pacific airports, promote civil aviation industry's contribution to this region's GDP and realize regional collaborative development.