The work that is presented in this paper is part of an ongoing study on the relationship between airspace structure and capacity. The present paper investigates the degree of structuring needed to maximize capacity for decentralized en-route airspace. To this end, four decentralized en-route airspace concepts, which vary in terms of the number of constrained degrees of freedom, were compared using fast-time simulations, for both nominal and non-nominal conditions. The airspace structure-capacity relationship was studied from the effect of multiple traffic demand densities on airspace metrics. The results indicated that structuring methods that over-constrained the horizontal path of aircraft reduced capacity, as traffic demand displays no predominant patterns in the horizontal dimension for decentralization. The results also showed that capacity was maximized when a vertical segmentation of airspace was used to separate traffic with different travel directions at different flight levels. This mode of structuring improved performance over completely unstructured airspace by reducing relative velocities between aircraft cruising at the same altitude, while allowing direct horizontal routes.

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Air traffic simulations serve as common practice to evaluate different concepts and methods for air transportation studies. The aircraft performance model is a key element that supports these simulation-based studies. It is also an important component for simulation-independent studies, such as air traffic optimization and prediction studies. Commonly, contemporary studies have to rely on proprietary aircraft performance models that restrict the redistribution of the data and code. To promote openness and research comparability, an alternative open performance model would be beneficial for the air transportation research community. In this paper, we introduce an open aircraft performance model (OpenAP). It is an open-source model that is based on a number of our previous studies, which were focused on different components of the aircraft performance. The unique characteristic of OpenAP is that it was built upon open aircraft surveillance data and open literature models. The model is composed of four main components, including aircraft and engine properties, kinematic performances, dynamic performances, and utility libraries. Alongside the performance model, we are publishing an open-source toolkit to facilitate the use of this model. The main objective of this paper is to describe each main component, their connections, and how they can be used for simulation and research in practice. Finally, we analyzed the performance of OpenAP by comparing it with an existing performance model and sample flight data.

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