Increasing Runway Capacity for Continuous Descent Approaches Through Airborne Precision Spacing

Weitz, Lesley A.; Hurtado, John E.; Bussink, Frank

doi:10.2514/6.2005-6142

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Initial results of this experiment show high correlation with past Langley experiments. 17,18,19 Figure 5 shows the behavior of the 26 th and 27 th aircraft in the middle of a 40 aircraft arrival stream merging in a nominal scenario. The momentary increase in airspeed at Top of Descent at the TRACON boundary (FL110) is due to the difference between ASTAR algorithm calculations and the aircraft's Flight Management System calculations.…”

Section: Experiments Results For Flight Crew Merging and Spacing Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Operational Concept for Flight Crews to Participate in Merging and Spacing of Aircraft

Baxley

Barmore

Abbott

et al. 2006

6th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO)

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The predicted tripling of air traffic within the next 15 years is expected to cause significant aircraft delays and create a major financial burden for the airline industry unless the capacity of the National Airspace System can be increased. One approach to improve throughput and reduce delay is to develop new ground tools, airborne tools, and procedures to reduce the variance of aircraft delivery to the airport, thereby providing an increase in runway throughput capacity and a reduction in arrival aircraft delay. The first phase of the Merging and Spacing Concept employs a ground based tool used by Air Traffic Control that creates an arrival time to the runway threshold based on the aircraft's current position and speed, then makes minor adjustments to that schedule to accommodate runway throughput constraints such as weather and wake vortex separation criteria. The Merging and Spacing Concept also employs arrival routing that begins at an en route metering fix at altitude and continues to the runway threshold with defined lateral, vertical, and velocity criteria. This allows the desired spacing interval between aircraft at the runway to be translated back in time and space to the metering fix. The tool then calculates a specific speed for each aircraft to fly while enroute to the metering fix based on the adjusted land timing for that aircraft. This speed is data-linked to the crew who fly this speed, causing the aircraft to arrive at the metering fix with the assigned spacing interval behind the previous aircraft in the landing sequence. The second phase of the Merging and Spacing Concept increases the timing precision of the aircraft delivery to the runway threshold by having flight crews using an airborne system make minor speed changes during enroute, descent, and arrival phases of flight. These speed changes are based on broadcast aircraft state data to determine the difference between the actual and assigned time interval between the aircraft pair. The airborne software then calculates a speed adjustment to null that difference over the remaining flight trajectory. Follow-on phases still under development will expand the concept to all types of aircraft, arriving from any direction, merging at different fixes and altitudes, and to any airport. This paper describes the implementation phases of the Merging and Spacing Concept, and provides high-level results of research conducted to date.

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Section: Experiments Results For Flight Crew Merging and Spacing Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Operational Concept for Flight Crews to Participate in Merging and Spacing of Aircraft

Baxley

Barmore

Abbott

et al. 2006

6th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO)

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“…Research by Weitz et al [6,17], has shown that AMSTAR can reduce initial inter-aircraft spacing errors to a smaller distribution at the runway threshold. However, the threshold spacing-error results had greater variability than when AMSTAR was used with traditional arrival routes.…”

Section: Integrating Amstar and Cdasmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Runway throughput is increased with more accurate inter-aircraft spacing at the runway threshold, which can reduce excess spacing buffers between aircraft pairs [4][5][6]. However, as runways are expected to handle a higher volume of traffic, aircraft noise becomes a concern for residents living in areas surrounding 0-7803-9307-4/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of Merging and Spacing Operations with Continuous Descent Approaches

Weitz

Hurtado

Barmore³

et al.

24th Digital Avionics Systems Conference

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Researchers at the NASA Langley ResearchCenter are developing the Airborne Precision Spacing (APS) concept to increase runway arrival throughput at capacity-constrained airports. Under APS operations, arrival capacity is increased by improving the precision of inter-arrival spacing at the runway threshold. Flight crews achieve this improved precision with the assistance of a new flight-deck system, which allows spacing operations to commence even while the aircraft and its lead are on different arrival routes to the runway. However, the increases in traffic volume that could be enabled by APS operations could also elevate noise concerns at busy airports.Noise-and fuel-efficiency concerns have independently motivated the air traffic management community to investigate Continuous Descent Approaches (CDAs) as alternatives to traditional arrival route profiles. However, uncertainties associated with CDA operations can cause runway capacity to be sacrificed. For this reason, CDA routes have only been implemented during lowdensity traffic operations.In this paper we report on current research into the integration of these two advancements, by employing APS operations to merge and space aircraft that are flying CDA arrival routes. Results obtained to date indicate that, while retaining the benefits of both techniques may be unachievable, APS operations can achieve narrow distributions of inter-aircraft spacing errors at the runway threshold for CDA routes. Analysis of the data also indicates that the spacing error distribution may be sensitive to inaccuracies in modeling the CDA trajectories for the aircraft and its lead.

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“…This can be observed when considering the current implementation of the Continuous Descent Approach (CDA). The trade-off for this procedure is either to accept a less than ideal continuous descent, or to accept a reduced arrival capacity (Davison Reynolds et al, 2006;Kershaw et al, 2000;Weitz et al, 2005). However, contradictory requirements are not the only problem that air traffic controllers face with respect to reducing community noise impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Traffic Control Decision Support for Integrated Community Noise Management

Sander¹,

Hendrikus²

2011

Aeronautics and Astronautics

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Increasing Runway Capacity for Continuous Descent Approaches Through Airborne Precision Spacing

Cited by 15 publications

References 5 publications

Operational Concept for Flight Crews to Participate in Merging and Spacing of Aircraft

Operational Concept for Flight Crews to Participate in Merging and Spacing of Aircraft

An Analysis of Merging and Spacing Operations with Continuous Descent Approaches

Air Traffic Control Decision Support for Integrated Community Noise Management

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