Reducing Departure Delays at LaGuardia Airport with Departure-Sensitive Arrival Spacing (DSAS) Operations

Abstract

Air traffic management in the New York (NY) metropolitan area presents significant challenges including excess demand, chronic delays, and inefficient routes. At NASA, a new research effort has been initiated to explore Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) solutions to address lingering problems in the NY metroplex. One of the larger problems in NY is departure delays at LaGuardia airport (LGA). Constant traffic demand and physical limitations in the number of taxiways and runways cause LGA to often end up with excessive departure queues that can persist throughout the day. At the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) located at NASA Ames Research Center, a TBO solution for "Departure-Sensitive Arrival Spacing" (DSAS) was developed. DSAS allows for maximum departure throughput without adversely impacting the arrival traffic during the peak demand period. The concept uses Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSS) operations to manage the actual runway threshold times for arrivals. An interface enhancement to the traffic manager's timeline was also added, providing the ability to manually adjust inter-arrival spacing to build precise gaps for two or even three departures between arrivals. With this set of capabilities, inter-arrival spacing could be controlled for optimal departure throughput. The concept was prototyped in a human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation environment to determine operational requirements such as coordination procedures, timing and magnitude of TSS schedule adjustments, and display features for the tower, Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), and Traffic Management Unit (TMU). A HITL simulation was conducted in August, 2014, to evaluate the concept in terms of feasibility, impact on controller workload, and potential benefits. Three conditions were compared: (1) a baseline condition using new RNAV/RNP procedures (no TSS); (2) the new procedures + TSS; and (3) new procedures + TSS + DSAS schedule adjustments. Results showed that with a maximum arrival demand (40-41 arrivals per hour), departure throughput could be increased from 38 / hour (baseline condition), to 44 / hour (TSS condition), to 47 / hour (TSS + DSAS). The results suggest that DSAS operations have the potential to increase departure throughput at LGA by up to 9 a/c per hour with little or no impact on arrivals during peak traffic demand period.

Exploring management of arrival spacing using route extensions with terminal spacing tools

“…DSAS allows for maximum departure throughput without adversely impacting the arrival traffic by adjusting the interarrival spacing slightly to create an optimal gap size for one or more departures [10]. This simulation demonstrated that the tools were helpful in creating the different sizes of gaps (Table 1) that were needed for LGA departures.…”

“…There were no winds in the simulation. More detailed descriptions of the August, 2014, simulation can be found in [10]. 1 Although there were two exploratory runs to test the route extensions, the results of only one exploratory run are included in this paper since it was found that there was a software error in one run that affected almost all results.…”

Modeling Functional Specifications of Ground Systems in the NAS

“…Between 2007 and 2012 the average departure delay was greater than 14 minutes. 8 Due to the majority of the flights being domestic, these delays spread in throughout the network to other airports.…”

“…The traffic at LGA consists of mainly large aircraft with a few additional smalls and Boeing 757s (B757s). 8 The traffic begins at 6 a.m. local time 9 and remains as a steady peak throughout the day untill 8 p.m. in the evening. Between these hours the scheduled number of arrivals can be over 50 aircraft per hour.…”

Integrated Demand Management: Coordinating Strategic and Tactical Flow Scheduling Operations

“…This research effort has leveraged new NextGen trajectory management technologies and concepts developed by the FAA, NASA, and others to provide a set of integrated solutions that can be used both in New York and elsewhere. 1,2,3,4,5 Extending the prior research on improving NY metroplex operations, NASA has initiated the development of a focused near-to mid-term concept called "Integrated Demand Management" (IDM) under the Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP). The focus of the research has been to develop more powerful, integrated operations and tools for managing trajectory constraints, leveraging existing systems, and adding new automation tools and methods where needed.…”