CONTROLLER TEAM POSSIBILITIES FOR SECTORLESS AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT Bettina Birkmeier, Sebastian Tittel, Bernd Korn German Aerospace Center, DLR, Braunschweig, Germany Abstract Sectorless air traffic management is an en-route concept, which eliminates the need for control sectors. Instead of assigning a geographic area (sector), air traffic controllers are assigned certain aircraft. Controllers are responsible for their assigned aircraft all the way from entry to exit. In previous simulations, one controller was responsible for six aircraft at the same time. As these aircraft can be located anywhere in the sectorless airspace, controllers were provided with one traffic display for each assigned aircraft. This discussion paper suggests other possibilities for providing traffic information to sectorless air traffic controllers. Instead of having one traffic display for each aircraft under control (tiled display), controllers could work with a general map, a zoom display to magnify certain traffic situations, or a combination of such displays. We revisit the concept of controller teams and explore alternatives. In addition to working alone or in pairs of executive and controller, the sectorless air traffic management concept opens possibilities for innovative teamwork. For example, there could be a team of one coordinator and several executives, or even a control-room team. This paper gives examples of new display and team ideas and discusses their respective advantages and disadvantages. We argue that the way traffic information is displayed to controllers affects their mental models and working methods. In addition, we provide results on the tiled display from previous simulations and introduce ideas for future research. Introduction Sectorless air traffic management (ATM) has been researched at the German Aerospace Center DLR since 2008 [1]. It is an en-route concept for air traffic control, where controllers are no longer in charge of geographic sectors but are assigned individual aircraft anywhere in the airspace. Controllers are responsible for the assigned aircraft from their entry into the sectorless airspace until their exit. Previous DLR papers have investigated various aspects of the concept: General feasibility of the concept for upper airspace was proven in 2011 [2]. A 2010 paper discussed the compatibility of sectorless ATM with the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) [3]. The concept will be part of SESAR 2020 as described in the multi-annual work programme [4]. Further DLR research covered priority rules [5], assignment strategies [6], the controller’s mental model [7], controller tasks [8], a safety net [9], a safety assessment [14], transition strategies [15], and color schemata for the controller working position [16]. A research report [17] summarizes DLR research on sectorless ATM between 2009 and 2014. Validations have been run on DLR’s TrafficSim, a simulator which is capable of fast-time and real- time simulations [2]. In real-time simulations, the simulator can be equipped with as many controller working positions (CWPs) as needed; traffic which is not assigned to simulation controllers can be guided by the simulator. Among experts and simulation participants, the design of the CWPs has been controversially discussed. Current CWP design supports a method of working where one controller is responsible for six aircraft at the same time. The decision to have just one sectorless controller instead of a team of executive and planner [7] has been another topic of many discussions [9]. For a general introduction to the concept of teams and teamwork, please refer to Paris et al. [10]. They give a review of team research, including an introduction to teams, team member selection, and team performance and effectiveness assessment. Paris et al. claim that among others, shared situation awareness is one behavior or skill of teams. EUROCONTROL [13] provides more specific 978-1-5090-2149-9/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 6C3-1