# ATC Human Factors Involved in RPAS Contingency Management in Non-Segregated Airspace
## 3 Experiments
### Airspace Sectors, RPAS, and Selected Missions  
Airspace is divided into volumes called sectors and air traffic controllers are responsible for the safety of flights within their sector. Most times, sectors are single-person managed by an executive controller and equipped with one controller working position. The controllers' workloads determine the maximum number of flights they can safely handle in their sector within a specified time. When measuring the ATC controller workload, we must identify when an RPAS is within one of the manned sectors. For that reason, we record a start event (sector entry) and an end event (sector exit) that delimit the time ATC manages the RPAS. Similarly, the events are recorded to measure the start and end of a contingency situation as well as other relevant events associated with manned traffic coordination and the provision of the separation service. Two high-performance RPAS vehicles were selected to operate during the real-time simulation. A civil-oriented high-altitude long-endurance Global Hawk RQ-4A, under NASA's livery and configuration, can reach a 65,000 ft ceiling with cruise speeds between 280 and 340 kt. The second vehicle is a medium-altitude long-endurance General Dynamics MQ-9, also under NASA's livery and configuration, which can reach a 40,000 ft ceiling with cruise speeds between 180 and 240 kt. We defined two different missions to perform the analysis: a Frontex (EU External Frontier project, now the European Border and Coast Guard) surveillance mission performed by an MQ-9 Reaper and a volcanic ash monitoring mission performed by an RQ-4A Global Hawk. Both missions simulate traffic involving all aircrafts crossing the selected airspace during the RPAS mission period. * MQ-9 Frontex Surveillance mission: This mission simulates the surveillance of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency for ship detection/identification. The trajectory, shown in Figure 2, has an initial standard airways/fixpoints part from the San Javier airport (LELC) to the selected mission area and a return trajectory through Valencia airport. The mission area is over the Mediterranean Sea close to the Balearic Islands and the surveillance trajectory occurs within a non-segregated airspace but not following standard airways/fixpoints. The simulation area partially intersects sectors LECBNW2-CSX and LECBNE-CS. Both sectors form part of the six sectors of Barcelona FIR: the sector LECBNW2-CSX is in charge of the northern arrivals to the main Balearic airports and the sector LECBNE-CS is in charge of the departures from the same airports. In particular, the RPAS mission consists of a flight from the north to the south of the Balearic Islands. * RQ-4A Volcano Surveillance mission: The RPAS has a volcanic ash surveillance mission departing from Hamburg Finkenwerder airport (EDHI) up to Iceland and then back to the same original airport, crossing multiple portions of non-segregated airspace over Germany, Denmark, and the North Sea. The surveillance occurs once it is over the Iceland area, but only the departure and arrival portions of the flight (see Figure 5) are considered during the evaluation. The RPAS flight plan of this mission crosses two different regions: Sector EKDKCUC in the southernmost flight information region of Koebenhavn, Denmark, and Sector EDYYHOL in the northernmost region of Hannover, Germany. As an example of the complete mission description, we detail the contingency plans of the RQ-4A Volcano Surveillance mission. For instance, in case of engine failure, Figure 5 depicts the initial selection of contingency airfields. The diagram shows a 350 NM radius around each airfield, indicating the maximum distance the RQ-4A can glide once at the cruise altitude. Additional airports should be necessary if 100% coverage of the mission route would be required.