Formulation of a Method to Assess Technologies for the Improvement of Airport Capacity

Commercial air transportation growth and airline deregulation in recent years have resulted in traffic volume beyond the capacity of existing airports and air traffic control. This excess traffic often results in delays and the subsequent revenue loss for airline operators. Therefore, a number of initiatives to improve airport capacity and throughput have been proposed. These initiatives include a wide variety of technologies ranging from runway independent vehicles to vortex sensing systems. However, in order to assess the impact of these technologies on commercial air traffic one must move beyond the vehicle to a system-of-systems point of view. The technologies proposed for the improvement of airport capacity require a modeling and simulation environment that can account for an airline’s flight network as well as a fleet composed of various aircraft types. The Aviation Systems Analysis Capability (ASAC) model, developed by the Logistics Management Institute under a NASA contract, may be viewed as the foundation for such an environment. However, a complete technology evaluation environment must not stop at a fleet analysis, other aspects of technology infusion must also be addressed. First, the impact of these technologies on the aircraft performance must be assessed. Second, the ability to calculate the cost of implementing the technologies, both within the aircraft cockpit and in ground facilities, must be developed. In addition, the effect of these technologies, and the resulting timesavings, on the airline’s indirect cost will be of utmost interest. Finally, the impact on the safety of the flight environment deserves careful analysis. This paper identifies the different models that may be used for a comprehensive, systematic evaluation of aircraft, fleet, safety and cost, as well as the issues involved in their integration. Furthermore, an outline of a probabilistic technology evaluation methodology is presented as a potential approach to the problem at hand once a complete model of the airspace system has been developed. The goal of this methodology, currently under development, is to analyze an entire aircraft fleet from a probabilistic point of view, taking into account safety and cost issues, as well as allowing for the infusion of new technologies. This will ultimately result in a dynamic what-if environment to aid decision-makers, as well as a means to quantify the risk and uncertainty associated with the application of new technologies including technology readiness levels, and other factors beyond the designers control. 22 Annual ISPA Conference, May 2000, Noordwijk, The Netherlands "Formulation of a Method to Assess Technologies for the Improvement of Airport Capacity". Mavris, D. N. and Garcia, E. page 2 INTRODUCTION Air traffic demand has been growing at a steady pace in recent years. The current fleet is three times larger than it was twenty years ago, and it is expected to continue expanding in order to accommodate the forecasted 5% annual growth in passenger demand. Unfortunately, the infrastructure required to support the commercial air system is being outpaced by the current market growth with the subsequent degradation in on-time performance. The tendency to use smaller aircraft to provide a larger selection of departure times only contributes to strain capacity further resulting in some of the worst delays since the eighties. In the near future, the ability of air carriers to meet demand, and avoid lost revenues will be severely limited by the adequacy of airports and air traffic management [1, 2]. Several approaches have been proposed to increase the capacity of the air space system. Airlines, for instance, could change operating procedures, moving away from hub-and-spoke systems and concentrated departures at two or three times in the day. Regulation changes could also be proposed allowing pilots to maintain their own safety separation with other aircraft in proposed free-flight environments. Other potential remedies include decision support tools which are being developed to ease controller workloads both en-route and at airports, as well as new high capacity and runway independent aircraft which are now on the drawing board. All of these approaches show promise for significant benefits, but due to the risks involved, are in need of credible, quantitative (if possible) models to analyze aircraft and forecast technology impacts from a fleet perspective, including performance, economics and safety. This paper is intended to describe the issues involved in the development of such a model, as well as the methodology to support it.