AN ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL CAPACITY ENHANCEMENTS THROUGH WIND DEPENDENT WAKE TURBULENCE PROCEDURES

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are jointly embarking on a multi-phased research and development program to develop and implement wake avoidance solutions that can safely reduce separations and improve capacity at airports in the National Airspace System (NAS). The mid-term phase of the research focuses on the potential application of wind-dependent procedures for improved departure operations from Closely Spaced Parallel Runways (CSPR) in the U.S. This paper describes the research performed to date by a few members of the larger research team, including the FAA, Lambert St. Louis International Airport operational staff, MIT Lincoln Laboratory and MITRE Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD). It describes the operational concept, the wind prediction algorithms being developed to support this concept and an analysis of expected algorithm performance. In addition, this paper addresses the information requirements for a decision support tool to support this procedure and the potential benefits that may be realized by this procedure at several CSPR airports in a weather and traffic demand environment. NASA is in early stages of extending this winddependent solution for other operations such as single runway departures. The paper also describes the thrust of these evolutionary concepts and the directions of research.