25 Years of Flight Centric ATC Research – What Happens Next?

In 2001, the idea of a new type of air traffic management concept called sectorless air traffic management was published for the first time. An idea that envisaged a complete restructuring of airspace to improve end-to-end quality of service and continuity of service by removing traditional sector boundaries and considering the resulting airspace as a single control area in which multiple controllers share responsibility for air traffic. Almost 25 years later, this concept, now known as Flight Centric Air Traffic Control, will reach technical readiness level 6 for implementation in low and medium complexity airspace when implemented at country level. This paper will discuss the historical development of the concept and summaries the results achieved. Even though reaching technical readiness level 6 normally marks the end of a concept from a research perspective, this paper also discusses why this is not the case for Flight Centric Air Traffic Control, which open research questions remain and why the development of this concept has lasted so long and yet has not been fully investigated.