The increased utilization of the new types of cockpit communications, including controller–pilot data link communications (CPDLC), puts the airplane at higher risk of hacking or interference than ever before. We review the technological characteristics and properties of the CPDLC and construct the corresponding threat model. Based on the limitations imposed by the system parameters, we propose several solutions for the improved security of the data messaging communication used in air traffic management (ATM). We discuss the applicability of elliptical curve cryptography (ECC), protected aircraft communications addressing and reporting systems (PACARs) and the Host Identity Protocol (HIP) as possible countermeasures to the identified security threats. In addition, we consider identity-defined networking (IDN) as an example of a genuine security solution which implies global changes in the whole air traffic communication system.

Covid-19 pandemic affected aviation severely, resulting in unprecedented reduction of air traffic. While aviation is slowly re-gaining traffic volumes, we use the opportunity to study the arrival performance in the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) in non-congested scenarios.

With the development of aircraft equipment, conventional navigation shifted towards performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures, which significantly improved the efficiency of airport arrivals. Availability of the open-access Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data enables research targeting careful and detailed analysis of the arrival performance. In this work, we demonstrate how we use historical data provided via Opensky Network to investigate various aspects of arrival performance at three European airports implementing different sequencing and merging techniques (Dublin, Stockholm-Arlanda, and Vienna). We create a number of datasets of different size and features, and apply a set of performance metrics characterizing horizontal and vertical efficiency, sequencing and metering effort, as well as environmental efficiency at the chosen airports.

Route planning and airspace sectorisation are two central tasks in air traffic management. Traditionally, the routing and sectorisation problems were considered separately, with aircraft trajectories serving as input to the sectorisation problem and, reciprocally, sectors being part of the input to the path finding algorithms.In this paper we propose a simultaneous design of routes and sectors for a transition airspace. We compare two approaches for this integrated design: one based on mixed integer programming, and one Voronoi-based model that separates potential “hotspots” of controller activity resulting from the terminal routes.We apply our two approaches to the design of Stockholm Terminal Maneuvering Area.