Advancing Automation for Future Skies: CATS Work Area 5 gets to work
Higher levels of automation are coming to air traffic management, some of it AI-enabled, most of it not. Traffic is growing, operations are getting more complex, and new airspace users are arriving. ANSPs will increasingly need automation to keep pace, with people in charge of the outcome.
The technology is arriving faster than the shared foundations for reliable validation and verification. Organisations across the industry are trialling and deploying AI in analytics, training and operational support, while common terminology, assurance approaches and governance lag behind. When one organisation says “automation level 2” or “decision support” and another means something different, nobody can compare notes.
The CATS Concept of Operations sets out a progressive evolution towards a more integrated, interoperable and increasingly automated airspace, with advanced automation playing a central role in enabling that transformation. Work Area 5 ¨Automation and AI for Future Skies¨ is helping translate that ambition into practical guidance. In late August, WA5 moved from an agreed work programme into delivery. Drafting has now been launched for the first two papers, with champions and contributors being mobilised across the wider four-paper programme..
We made three decisions early. The focus is automation in all its forms, not AI alone: real operational systems increasingly combine advanced rule-based automation and optimisation with machine learning and AI-enabled capabilities, and the operator cares about the capability, not the technique. There will be one integrated automation framework, not separate AI and non-AI tracks. And we will complement rather than duplicate: the SESAR ATM Master Plan, ICAO’s Global Air Navigation Plan and the standards and regulatory work already under way all all provide important foundation. Our job is to focus on the gaps between them, seen from the operational side.
The output is four short papers.
Foundations sets the common language: shared terminology, the automation landscape, and an integrated framework aligned with the CATS CONOPS.
Implementing Higher Levels of ATM Automation covers practice: transformation pathways, readiness, barriers, and real deployment experience, including implementations that did not deliver what was hoped. Different roles, safety criticality and starting points call for different approaches.
Assuring Advanced Automation asks how governance, assurance and oversight need to change for more capable systems to earn operational trust, with effort proportionate to criticality, and with accountability and liability on the table.
Securing Automated Future Skies runs across the whole programme: cyber resilience, data integrity, secure architectures and trusted information exchange.
Advanced automation is also not only a technology challenge. It changes roles, responsibilities, skills and ways of working. Implementation readiness, human-machine teaming, trust and change management therefore need to evolve alongside the technology. A technically capable system that people cannot confidently use or organisations cannot safely absorb will not deliver its intended operational benefit.
By its nature, CANSO can play a role between organisations as automation projects are deployed, bringing its members together to collaborate and achieve a more effective outcome. Most automation programmes are developed within individual organisations, States or regions. Traffic is not. It crosses boundaries between organisations with very different investment levels, and one day a highly automated sector will hand traffic to a neighbour that works quite differently. Harmonised concepts, terminology and assurance expectations are what make that workable. This group exists so hard-won lessons get shared across the membership rather than relearned one ANSP at a time.
If you are part of the CANSO community and want to contribute, the door is open. We want operational case studies, lessons learned — especially the uncomfortable ones — review effort, and pointers to work we should build on. Contact the CANSO Future Skies team.
