The Efficiency of New Audio Alerts in the COOPANS Eurocat System

The Air Traffic Control System in Ireland, known as COOPANS, has been developed in conjunction with an industry partner Thales Group, is deployed in five European countries – Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, is unique as all countries operate the same software version and by 2020 will be responsible for 3,559,000 flights within European airspace. These systems are designed to detect and alert critical situations such as conflict between aircraft, between aircraft and terrain and between aircraft and areas where there is a risk to flight within that airspace. COOPANS provides three different safety alerts to warn Air Traffic Controllers of system safety events, including Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA) which indicates potential for a loss in either required lateral or vertical separation between aircraft; Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) which indicates that an aircraft is operating at an altitude which may not be terrain safe; and Area Proximity Warning (APW) which indicates that an aircraft is projected to enter airspace which is segregated due to military or security operations. 77 participants out of a total Air Traffic Control cadre of 375 rated Air Traffic Controllers took part in the trial. 38 participants completed Trial A – traditional audio alert and 39 participants completed Trial B enhanced audio alert. The results demonstrate that the enhanced audio alert improved air traffic controller performance and efficiency across all three critical incident situations STCA, MSAW, APW regardless of air traffic controller experience. This improved performance resulted in faster response times by the air traffic controllers to the critical alerts presented. Training for air traffic controllers in the use of these new audio alert presentations can be harmonized and no distinctions need be made between experts and novices. This represents substantial benefit to air navigation service providers in avoiding increased costs in designing separate training programs for expert and novice air traffic controllers.