Performance Evaluation of SARDA: An Individual Aircraft-based Advisory Concept for Surface Management

Abstract

Surface operations at airports in the US are based on tactical operations, where departure aircraft primarily queue up and wait at the departure runways. NASA's Spot And Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) tool was developed to address these inefficiencies through air traffic control tower advisories. The SARDA system is being updated to include collaborative gate-hold, either tactically or strategically. This paper presents the results of the human-in-the-loop evaluation of the tactical gate-hold version of SARDA in a 360 simulated tower setting. The simulations were conducted for the east side of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. The new system provides gate-hold, ground controller and local controller advisories based on a single scheduler. Simulations were conducted with SARDA on and off, the off case reflecting current day operations with no gate-hold. Scenarios based on medium (1.2x current levels) and heavy (1.5x current levels) traffic were explored. Data collected from the simulation were analyzed for runway usage, runway queue size, delay for departures and arrivals, and fuel consumption. Further, traffic management initiatives were introduced for a subset of the aircraft. Results indicated that runway usage did not change with the use of SARDA, i.e., there was no loss in runway throughput

Scheduling and Delivering Aircraft to Departure Fixes in the NY Metroplex with Controller-Managed Spacing Tools

“…Results show a reduction of surface delays, increased precision of takeoff times, and increased runway throughput. 16,17 Another problem area relates to interdependent runway operations. Currently, the TBFM estimation of takeoff times does not take into consideration dependencies between arrival and departure runways.…”

Tactical Surface Metering Procedures and Information Needs for Charlotte Douglas International Airport

“…A departure metering tool that could meter the traffic while considering arrivals and runway crossings, in a tactical manner, could potentially alleviate the congestion problem. Research on one such tool, the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) [2,3] has been conducted at NASA Ames Research Center. This tool was further investigated and deployed at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), NC in the fall of 2017 under the Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) project [4] described in the next section.…”

“…The primary goal of the ATD-2 project is to improve the predictability and the operational efficiency of the air traffic system in metroplex environments while maintaining or improving throughput by enhancing and integrating arrival, departure and surface prediction, scheduling, and management systems. The IADS capabilities defined in the ATD-2 project are built upon previous NASA research, including the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) [2,3], the Precision Departure Release Capability (PDRC) [5], and the Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSAS) capability [6]. In the first phase of deployment in CLT, a tactical surface scheduler was deployed at CLT in the ramp control facility.…”

Evaluation of a tactical surface metering tool for Charlotte Douglas international airport via human-in-the-loop simulation

“…in a tactical manner could potentially alleviate the problem. Research on one such tool, the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) [1,2] was conducted at NASA Ames Research Center. Other tools that perform departure metering include those deployed at sites such as John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport and are focused on providing Target Movement Area entry Times (TMATs) to the airlines several hours in advance, making the tool primarily strategic in nature [3].…”