Demonstration of reduced airport congestion through pushback rate control

Abstract

Airport surface congestion results in significant increases in taxi times, fuel burn and emissions at major airports. This paper describes the field tests of a congestion control strategy at Boston Logan International Airport. The approach determines a suggested rate to meter pushbacks from the gate, in order to prevent the airport surface from entering congested states and to reduce the time that flights spend with engines on while taxiing to the runway. The field trials demonstrated that significant benefits were achievable through such a strategy: during eight four-hour tests conducted during August and September 2010, fuel use was reduced by an estimated 12,250-14,500 kg (4,000-4,700 US gallons), while aircraft gate pushback times were increased by an average of only 4.4 minutes for the 247 flights that were held at the gate.

Optimal control of airport operations with gate capacity constraints

“…The model predicts that this maximum throughput will be achieved asymptotically. This performance saturation is in agreement with empirical studies [2], [11], which are based on operational airport data.…”

“…Since the total amount of surface fuel burn is roughly proportional to the taxi times of aircraft [1], reducing aircraft taxi times significantly reduces fuel consumption. A promising congestion mitigation approach is to hold aircraft at their gates until it is optimal for them to start taxiing, as was demonstrated in [2]; however, limited gate availability can pose a challenge to the implementation of such protocols at major airports. It is therefore important to account for such constraints when designing congestion control strategies.…”

“…These aircraft encounter lower congestion on the surface, thus reducing their taxi times. The primary aim of these prior studies was to limit surface congestion, and to then evaluate the incidental benefits in fuel burn [2]. Constraints such as the availability of gates at the airport have not been explicitly considered in literature.…”

Network Congestion Control of Airport Surface Operations

“…In the context of airport operations, aggregate rate-control approaches that aim to stabilize surface traffic at a specific level have been proposed. 20 These algorithms are easy to implement in practice, but do not realize the full potential fuel savings and performance gains that may be possible though more detailed congestion management strategies. The solution approach proposed in this paper tries to decrease the level of aggregation in order to increase the benefits from congestion control, while only recommending pushback times to aircraft.…”

Analyzing the moderating effects of respondent type and experience on the fuel efficiency improvement in air transport using structural equation modeling

“…Congestion at the airport and inappropriate air traffic management raised the fuel burn of an aircraft [4]. We have included the independent variables-origin airport, destination airport, flight profile, runway design, taxiway, apron, and weather conditions, as suggested by Senzig et al [67]; Upham et al [77]; Kazda and Caves [45]; IATA [37]; Salah [66]; Simaiakis et al [71]; Singh and Sharma [74] for AI construct. There are a number of ways that airports, airlines and air traffic management providers can improve the air transportation system to minimize fuel burn.…”