Accident Risk Assessment of Simultaneous Converging Instrument Approaches

Abstract

With increasing traffic there often are environmental and economical reasons to optimise Simultaneous Converging Instrument Approaches (SCIA) without sacrificing the high safety levels realised in air traffic. One of the well known safety issues of SCIA is the risk of a mid air collision due to a double go around. The aim of this paper is to show through a working example that there is a clear advantage to accomplish the safety protection through support of advanced accident risk assessment methodology. In this paper such methodology is applied to a specific example of SCIA at Schiphol airport. Comparison of the obtained results against FAA established SCIA criteria shows that there are situations in which these FAA criteria are not met, while the collision risk is not higher than for other situations that satisfy these criteria. The implication for Schiphol airport is that a specific change can be introduced as being risk neutral. The implication for other busy airports with converging runways might be that there is room to develop new or improved SCIA without compromising safety.

A review of research on risk and safety modelling in civil aviation

“…These include efforts to increase the number of tracks and reduce the lateral and vertical separation minima from 100 nm and 2000 ft to 50 nm and 1000 ft, in the airspace between California and Hawaii in 1973/74 and between Japan and Alaska in 1981; to examine the adequacy of ICAO recommended lateral separation minima between high-altitude parallel routes defined by ground-based navigational aids in US national airspace; to reduce the vertical separation minima above Flight Level 290 (29,000 ft); to reduce lateral separation minima between aircraft approaching closely spaced parallel runways; and to assess the wake vortex induced accident risks occurring for different aircraft categories in terms of weight approach and land on the single runway 4 ; to assess the collision risk between the simultaneously missed approach aircraft independently of the decision height, air traffic controller instructions and the mode of runway use; and to understand the influence of ATC/ATM on collision risk, including reduction of the nominal separation between the opposite traffic streams (Blom et al, 1998(Blom et al, , 2003b(Blom et al, , 2005Kos et al, 2000;Speijker et al, 2000a, b;Van Baren et al, 2002).…”

Simulating Collision Probabilities of Landing Airplanes at Nontowered Airports

“…Since collisions are rare, we used two techniques to increase the efficiency of simulation (similar to techniques used in Blom, Klompstra, and Bakker 2003): (a) Conditioning on hazardous events (so the probability of a simulated collision is higher) and (b) using the generalized Reich collision model to enhance the results of simulation. Performance using these techniques was good, since we were able to get statistically significant results without excessive computer time (several hours on a PC).…”

“…For further details on DCPN's, see Everdij, et al (1997). For an example of DCPN's applied to simultaneous approaches of two airplanes on two converging runways, see Blom, Klompstra, and Bakker (2003). Figure 3.2 shows two separate (but not independent) Petri nets.…”

“…We now discuss the simulation method used in several TOPAZ models to evaluate collision risk (e.g., Blom, Klompstra, and Bakker 2003). The method uses dynamically colored Petri nets (DCPN's) as a framework for simulation.…”

Avaliação do perigo de colisão entre aeronaves em operação de aproximação em pistas de aterrissagem paralelas.

“…A operação de aproximação dependente é denominada de DCIA (Dependent Converging Instrument Approaches). Nesta última configuração, um dos perigos mais conhecidos é a possibilidade de colisão em pleno vôo, devido à emissão de dupla autorização Bakker, 2001).…”