Chairholder

Fricke_2024.JPG © Hartmut Fricke

Hartmut Fricke

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Fricke has held the Chair of Air Transport Technology and Logistics since 2001 and is Director of the Institute of Logistics and Aviation, which since 2018 has also included the Chair of Helicopter Technologies as a joint appointment with the DLR in Braunschweig, Institute of Systems Engineering. The intention of this expansion, driven by Fricke, is to extend his research interests to Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which will also be significantly characterized by the operation of rotorcraft drones. The chair's portfolio thus covers all common aircraft configurations and application spectrums. Hartmut Fricke and his team regularly publish at the leading international conferences in the fields of air traffic management, digital avionics and operations research and in the relevant scientific journals. He is a member of the Program Committee of the Europe / USA ATM Seminar and European Program Chair of the International Conference for Research in Air Transportation ICRAT. He is also Field Editor for the Council of European Aerospace Societies - CEAS Aeronautical Journal.

Hartmut Fricke joined the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure BMVI in 2006 and chaired it from 2018 - 2020. During this time, he also made significant contributions to the standardization of drone flight operations and airport infrastructure in Germany. In 2019, Fricke was elected to the Federal Drone Advisory Board and the Innovation Commission of the BMVI.

From 2014 to 2018, Fricke was an elected DFG review board member for review board 407 "Systems Engineering", in particular for the area 407-04 "Traffic and Transportation Systems, Logistics, Intelligent and Automated Traffic". He has been a DFG liaison lecturer at TU Dresden since 01.01.2020.

CORE RESEARCH AREAS

  • Support of ground processes at airports Airport Operations:
    Analysis of the turnaround behavior of aircraft 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 using stochastic optimization and covolution
  • Evaluation procedures for the efficiency of airspace structures Airspace Management:
    Economic and anthropotechnical benchmark of airspace structures, especially in 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 simulations (ABMS) are used to evaluate innovative approach/departure procedures in terms of conflict/collision probability. On approach, the focus is on closely spaced multi-runway systems at large airports, alternative sequencing models for the approach sector, new separation logics between aircraft using machine learning (ML) methods. Special focus on LiDAR sensor technology as a potential safety contribution for apron operations at small airfields using 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, punctuality, speed. Development of the complex simulation tool TOMATO for multi-criteria trajectory optimization with special consideration of the weather. Traffic flow analysis. Optimized climb and descent procedures (CCO/CDO) using optimal control and linear optimization methods.
  • Certification of drone flight operations over urban and rural areas Urban Air Mobility:
    Design of take-off/landing sites for electric VTOL under optimality criteria. Transfer and migration of procedure planning from approach/departure procedures of conventional commercial air traffic (ICAO PANS-OPS) to UAM. UAM-inclusive traffic management in the context of U-Space.
  • Validation and human-in-the-loop simulation technology simulators:
    The chair is continuously expanding its trial and test 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. Use of commercial software for airport planning (AviPlan) and procedure planning (AirTop) in cooperation with Transoft Solutions Aviation, also in teaching.

TEACHING TASKS

Publications

103 Entries

2026

2025

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Last modified: May 07, 2026