Evaluating the impact of new aircraft separation minima on available airspace capacity and arrival time delay

Abstract

Although the application of new, reduced aircraft separation minima can directly increase runway throughput, the impact thereof on the traffic flow of aircraft arriving at the destination airport has not been discussed yet. This paper proposes a data-driven and queue-based modeling approach and presents an analysis of the impact on the delay time of arriving aircraft in the airspace within a radius of 100 nautical miles around an airport. The parameters of our queuing model were estimated by analysing the data contained in the radar tracks and flight plans for flights that arrived at Tokyo International Airport during the 2 years of 2016 and 2017. The results clarified the best arrival strategy according to the distance from the arrival airport: The combination of airspace capacity control and reduction of the flight time and separation variance is the most powerful solution to mitigate delays experienced by arriving traffic while also allowing an increase in the amount of arrival traffic. The application of new wake vortex categories would enable us to increase the arrival traffic to 120%. In addition, the arrival delay time could be minimised by implementing the proposed arrival traffic strategies together with automation support for air traffic controllers.

Analyzing tactical control strategies for aircraft arrivals at an airport using a queuing model

“…In (15) an M /G/c queuing model is proposed to analyze air traffic in an airspace around an airport. In (16), a discussion on future air traffic control strategies is provided. In (18), a state dependent M /M /c/K queuing model is applied to control the pedestrian flows and the capacity of pedestrian facilities in open outdoor walking environments.…”

Air Traffic Management and Systems IV

“…6(1)) and 30 aircraft (see Fig. 6(2)) from the south-west arrives within 150NM radius concentric circle in an hour [12].…”

“…One of the important arrival strategies to determine is where and how the aircraft arrival flow shifts to time management towards the arrival airport while minimizing arrival delay time. The first author's study clarified the best arrival strategy based on the analysis applying data-driven queuing models [10][11] [12]. The proposed queue-based approach demonstrated that there are five parameters, which impact on arrival delay time as follows: 1) arrival traffic rate 2) airspace capacity 3) mean of aircraft flight time 4) variance of aircraft flight time 5) variance of aircraft inter-arrival time.…”

“…Based on the proposed queue-based approaches [10][11] [12], the best arrival strategy to minimize arrival time delay is increasing airspace capacity within around 50NM radius range. Extending aircraft flight time (with delay time) is more effective where the variances of interarrival time is smaller, thus absorbing aircraft arrival delay closer to the airport is relevant operation for mitigating arrival delay time in the current arrival operation.…”

“…(2) Arrival traffic from the south-west direction, 17:00-22:00 Figure 6 Arrival rate in an hour [12] Figure 7 Distributions of airports in Japan 8 shows that the STD corresponding to arrivals from RJFF grows between 130 NM and 160NM, where departing flights from RJOO and RJBB merge into traffic departing from RJFF. As shown in Fig.…”