Chairholder

Fricke_2024.JPG © Hartmut Fricke

Hartmut Fricke

Hartmut Fricke has held the professorship for Aviation Technology and Logistics since 2001 and is the director of the Institute of Logistics and Aviation, which since 2018 also includes the professorship for Helicopter Technology as a joint appointment with DLR in Braunschweig, Institute of Systems Engineering. The intention of this expansion driven by Fricke is to extend the chair's research capabilities to Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which will be significantly characterized by rotorcraft drone operations. The chair's portfolio now covers all common aircraft configurations and operational spectrums. Hartmut Fricke and his team publish regularly at the leading international conferences in the field of Air Traffic Management, Digital Avionics as well as Operations Research and the relevant scientific journals. He has been a member of the Program Committee and European Doctoral Chair of the Europe / USA AIr Transport Research and Development (ATRD) Seminar. Since 2024 he has been Spokesperson of the DFG Research Trraining Group AIrMetro studying the urban integration of highly automated / unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in a dedicated team of 20+ PhD RTG students. 

Hartmut Fricke has been member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the German Federal Minister of Transport (BMV)  since 2006. Besides many other, significant contributions were also made to the standardization of drone flight operations as well as airport infrastructure in Germany in that function.

In 2019, Dr. Fricke was elected to the Federal Drone Advisory Board and the BMV Innovation Commission.

Since 2020, he has been DFG Liaison Officer of TU Dresden. 

Since 2022, Dr. Fricke has been the Aerospace Coordinator of the Free State of Saxony.

RESEARCH AREAS

  • Support of ground processes at airports Airport Operations:
    Analysis of aircraft turnaround behavior under specific boundary conditions (hub / non-hub). Statistical modeling of process chains, design of A-CDM decision support systems, control and regulation of system disturbances by means of stochastic optimization and covolution.
  • Evaluation procedures for the efficiency of airspace structures Airspace Management:
    Economic and anthropotechnical benchmark of airspace structures, specifically within the Single European Sky (SES) driven supranational Functional Airspace Block (FAB) context. Global performance analysis between Asia (China) and Europe using Machine Learning (NL) and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (EAI) methods.
  • Safety assessment of flight procedures and taxiing movements Safety:

    Complex Agent based Modeling and Simulations (ABMS) are used to evaluate innovative approach/departure procedures in terms of aircraft conflict/collision probability. On approach, closely spaced multi-runway systems of large airports, alternative sequencing models for the approach sector, new staggering logics between aircraft with machine learning (ML) methods are focused. Emphasis on LiDAR sensor technology as a safety contribution for apron operations at small airfields with computer vision and machine learning (ML) technologies.

  • Optimized planning and execution of flight trajectories Trajectory Management: 

    Flight performance analysis and modeling in the context of variable objective functions such as fuel minimization, noise reduction, environmental protection, on-time performance, speed. Development of the complex simulation tool TOMATO for multi-criteria trajectory optimization with special attention to weather. Traffic flow analyses. Optimized climb and descent (CCO/CDO) procedures using optimal control and linear optimization methods. 

  • Certification of drone flight operations over urban and rural areas Urban Air Mobility:
    Design of takeoff/landing sites for electric VTOL under optimality criteria. Transfer and migration of procedural planning from approach/departure procedures of conventional commercial air traffic (ICAO PANS-OPS) to UAM. UAM inclusive traffic management in the context of  SESARs U-Space. 
  • Validation and human-in-the-loop simulation technology Simulatoren:
    The chair continuously expands its testing and validation environments, especially the ATM real-time simulation laboratory consisting of air traffic controller, pseudo pilot workstations, Airbus A320 FMS flight simulator. Further development of special software in cooperation with EUROCONTROL Experimental Center is a permanent activity. Use of commercial software for airport planning (AviPlan) and procedure planning (AirTop) in cooperation with Transoft Solutions Aviation to teach our students in latest industial products for air transport infrastructure planning. 

LECTURES

PUBLICATIONS

104 Entries

2026

2025

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Last modified: Jun 16, 2026