Observations of Departure Processes at Logan Airport to Support the Development of Departure Planning Tools

Shortle

9th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO)

et al. 2009

Airport gates are one of the congestion points of the air transportation system. When an arriving flight lands on a runway, it is possible that it cannot pull into its gate. We define this phenomenon as gate-waiting delay. This paper analyzes the degree to which gate waiting is a problem and the functional causes of gate waiting. Analysis of flight performance data for the OEP 35 airports a for the summer of 2007 identified that: (i) Significant gate-waiting delays, in which more than 30% of arriving aircraft are delayed, occurred at 10 of the OEP 35 airports, (ii) major gate-waiting delays are rare events (e.g., once a month at ATL), (iii) Gate-waiting delays are usually different among major carriers due to different scheduling strategies. For example, Delta schedules more aggressively on their gate capacity (overscheduling) than JetBlue at JFK. (iv) Functional origins of gate-waiting delay included compressed arrivals, extended gate occupancy times, reduced number of gates, and inflexible queueing disciplines (across carriers and within one carrier). Many of these origins are related to schedule disruptions which are the main common factor identified in the worst days. The methodology for analysis, the results, and the implications of these results are discussed.

Section: B Methods 1: Estimation and Validation Of Gate-waiting Delaymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3,20,21 The minimum service time under ideal turnaround operations has also been modeled. 22 But the impact of schedule disruptions on turnaround operations has not been studied thoroughly.…”

Section: Modeling Of the Taxi-in And Turnaround Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Gate-waiting Delays at Major US Airports

Shortle

9th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO)

et al. 2009

“…Idris examined the departure system at Boston Logan airport in [14] and [15], concluding that the runway is the primary bottleneck for the departure system. This is also the case at Heathrow.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

An examination of take-off scheduling constraints at London Heathrow airport

Atkin

Burke

Greenwood³

et al. 2009

Public Transp

Abstract:In this paper, we focus upon the departure system for London Heathrow airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Decreasing the delay for aircraft awaiting take-off with their engines running would decrease fuel usage and have consequent cost and pollution benefits. We explain how the departure system at Heathrow currently works and we describe the various constraints that apply to take-off schedules. A model for the take-off order problem is presented from the point of view of the runway controller, the person who is responsible for the take-off scheduling. We investigate the effects of each constraint and combination of constraints, using a simulation of the Heathrow departure system. The role of the runway controller in the simulation is performed by a search which was designed to form the basis of an online decision support system. Both the simulation and the decision support system are fully described. We use the results to evaluate the effect upon delay that we would expect from various changes that could be made to the departure system. We end the paper by drawing conclusions about the predicted effectiveness of different changes that could be made to the departure system and focus upon a further opportunity for decision support research.

Air Transportation Systems Engineering

“…Furthermore, the design of a high-level architecture for airport departure management should be based on a thorough analysis of the airport system and understanding of the needs and constraints in current airport operational procedures. To this end, a significant set of field observations has been done at Boston Logan International Airport [ 6], [ 7], [ 8] the results of which are summarized in Section 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Design of a Departure Planner Decision Aid

Anagnostakis¹,

Idris²,

Clarke³

et al. 2001

Terminal area Air Traffic Management handles both arriving and departing traffic. To date, research work on terminal area operations has focused primarily on the arrival flow and typically departures are taken into account only in an approximate (average) manner. However, arrivals and departures are highly coupled processes especially in the terminal airspace, with complex interactions and sharing of the same airport resources between arrivals and departures taking place in practically every important terminal area. Therefore, the addition of automation aids for departures, possibly in co-operation with existing arrival flow automation systems, could have a profound contribution in enhancing the overall efficiency of airport operations. This paper presents the conceptual system architecture for such an automation aid, the Departure Planner (DP). This architecture c an be used as a core in the development of decision-aiding systems to assist air traffic controllers in improving the performance of departure operations and optimize runway time allocation among different operations at major congested airports. The design of such systems is expected to increase the overall efficiency of terminal area operations and yield benefits for all stakeholders involved in Air Traffic Management (ATM) operations, users as well as service providers.