Increasing Air Traffic Management efficiency by integrating manned aviation with unmanned aviation at civilian air traffic control tower

The paper tackles the airspace integration of unmanned aviation with manned aviation within the Romanian airspace, a topic with a large coverage within Romanian society but insufficiently covered at the academia level and without a ConOps tailored for Romania. Article 8 of Chicago Convention and the geostrategic situation at the Black Sea are the main drives for researching a more efficient solution to integration. The research simulates the real unmanned flights done at scale in controlled and uncontrolled airspace with manned aviation flights at LRBC to identify best flight procedure, airspace design and ATCo capacity with the hypothesis that the two airspace users could be safely integrated. Agent based fast modelling is used to demonstrate how and in what conditions the unmanned aviation could be integrated with manned aviation in CTR. Data is collected from unmanned flights and BADA database provided by EUROCONTROL which are enough for the purpose of the simulation. Changes in variable values will determine what operational procedures, airspace design, certification and opportunities for automation of the ATM system are necessary. The research scope is to find the best present solution to safely integrate manned aviation with unmanned aviation, proposing a holistic air traffic management approach having as principles minimum system and technology changes.