Opportunities and challenges when implementing trajectory-based taxi operations at European and U.S. CDM airports

This paper investigates opportunities and challenges when implementing Trajectory-based Taxi Operations at airports dependent on the availability of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes in Europe and the U.S. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) jointly developed a concept of operations for Trajectory-based Taxi Operations. An essential prerequisite of this concept is that adequate information sharing processes referring to collaborative decision making are available. CDM concepts like Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and Surface Collaborative Decision Making (S-CDM) were introduced by EUROCONTROL and the FAA, respectively, to improve the use of the available airport infrastructure. Both concepts aim to improve the efficiency of airport operations by reducing congestion on the airport surface, improving the traffic flow efficiency, and reducing uncertainties during airport operations. Both concepts are compared in this paper with a focus on taxi operations and the impact on the stakeholders. This paper provides an answer to the question which opportunities and challenges might be faced with the implementation of Trajectory-based Taxi Operations at airports with A-CDM and S-CDM. Especially from the perspective of involved stakeholders, the operational objectives that are partially contradicting to each other are discussed. It is shown that both CDM processes generally leverage the implementation of Trajectory-based Taxi Operations. However, there are still existing gaps that are identified and addressed in this paper. They based on current research in the area of airport surface traffic optimization towards Trajectory-based Taxi Operations.