Sensis Enriches Industry-Leading Aerobahn CDM Platform With New Features

According to the FAAs Surface CDM System Sub-Team, airlines have noted a taxi-out time reduction as high as 14% after deploying Aerobahn, said John Jarrell, vice president and general manager of Sensis Air Traffic Systems. That translates into significant cost savings. Sensis Aerobahn combines airside operational information, such as flight schedules, with the exact location and identification of aircraft on the surface of the airport for a real-time, comprehensive view of surface operations. Aerobahn enables users to observe departure queues, view actual arrival demand and contrast the demand with available gates for arriving aircraft. Users can also set Aerobahn to provide a visual alert when performance thresholds, such as taxi-out times, are met or exceeded. All events are recorded for future playback, providing users with the ability to identify trends, develop new procedures to mitigate delays or similar events in the future and provide justification for process improvements. For irregular operations, such as bad weather, users have better situational awareness of aircraft location and the elapsed time of specific events, such as deicing operations. In addition, users can customize their view and tools to maximize use of the service. Aerobahn Version 5 has several new features and enhancements: Customizable User Views and Maps: with Version 5, users can add annotations to the airport map to visually indicate events, such as construction and closed runways, which directly affects airport performance. There is also a picture-in-picture feature that enables users to simultaneously view the entire airport and a region of specific interest. User-created Reports: users can build their own reports based on numerous variables using drag-and-drop pivot tables. Reports can be saved and shared among users and exported to be used in standard spreadsheet programs. Additional Event Alerting Options: users can define and assign multiple alerting thresholds, down to the minute. For example, a flight can be set to blink orange after one hour on the tarmac and then turn red after two hours. This enables users to see potential problems sooner and take corrective action. Aerobahn Version 5 also features region-based alerting where an alert is generated when an aircraft has occupied a selected region of the airport for longer than the configured number of minutes. This latest release represents the evolution of ten years of development and five years of customers using Aerobahn for operational efficiency, said Jarrell. With Aerobahn Version 5, customers now have a highly customizable tool that will enable further efficiency gains and collaboration among stakeholders while delivering key capabilities, such as event alerting, to proactively manage Passenger Bill of Rights issues. Further, Aerobahn is designed to be fully compatible with Eurocontrols CDM protocol. Sensis Aerobahn is the most widely deployed surface management system in the industry, being used by airlines, airport operators and ANSPs around the world. Aerobahn is the surface management system for the industrys only fully-realized collaborative airport surface operations environment at JFK International Airport where the ANSP (Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Air Traffic Control System Command Center, JFK Transportation Security Administration Operations Center (TSA), JFK Air Traffic Control Tower, NY Air Route Traffic Control Center, and NY Terminal Approach Control facility), airport owner (Port Authority of New York/New Jersey) and authorized airlines all have access to the same data to coordinate operations. Additionally, Aerobahn recently won a competitive procurement to be the surface management tool at the worlds busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, through the City of Atlantas Department of Aviation.