Assessment of the Impacts of the SISCEAB Transition Altitudes Harmonization Project (TAHP)

• Ricardo Silva de Oliveira
• José Maria Parente de Oliveira
• Adilson Cleómenes Rocha
• Cristian da Silveira Smidt
• Marília Gusman Thomazi

Instituto de Controle do Espaço Aéreo (ICEA) · Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA)

Evento

XIX SITRAER – São José dos Campos, SP, Brasil, 25 a 27 de outubro de 2022

Volume

Proceedings of SITRAER 2022 – Air Transportation Symposium · ISSN 2448-1912

Páginas

223–234

Editora

Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Transporte Aéreo (SBTA)

Editores

Giovanna Miceli Ronzani Borille, Rogéria de Arantes Gomes, Evandro José da Silva, Mauro Caetano, Cláudia Azevedo Pereira

Abstract

In the late 1950s, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) established that States (countries) are responsible for defining the Transition Altitude (TA). When crossing this reference, the barometric altimeter must be set to report altitude, when descending, or flight level, when ascending. Initially, the TA was established for each aerodrome, without considering the other aerodromes in the vicinity, however, with the increase in the volume of air traffic, Brazil started to define a single TA for each Terminal Control Area (TMA). However, the constant evolution experienced by the aeronautical industry points to the need of defining a single TA for national aerodromes. This is not a trivial choice. The TA selected should improve current levels of safety, reduce pilots and air traffic controllers workload, and deployment costs should be acceptable. Given this scenario, this work presents the architectures of the four flight information regions of the Brazilian Airspace Control System (SISCEAB), its forty-one Terminal Control Areas (TMA), the TAs used in these terminals, the highest aerodromes, the highest obstacles of the Brazilian territory and the distribution of aeronautical meteorological stations. All the used data was analyzed according to the methodology used by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), in which three possible lines of action are adopted. The first possible line of action is to maintain the current scenario, that is, not to harmonize the TAs. The second option analyzes the impacts of adopting the altitude of 10000 feet for TA harmonization. Finally, in the last scenario, the impacts of adopting an altitude of 18000 feet are studied. The obtained results bring important support for the decision to be made in the TA harmonization project.

Keywords: Transition Altitude Harmonization; Altimeter Setting; Transition Level