Use of Individual Flight Corridors to Avoid Vortex Wakes

Vortex wakes of aircraft pose a hazard to following aircraft until the energetic parts of their e owe elds have decayed to a harmless level. It is suggested here that in-trail spacings between aircraft can be signie cantly and safely reduced by designing an individual, vortex-free e ight corridor for each aircraft. Because each aircraft will then have its own e ight corridor, which is free of vortex wakes while in use by the assigned aircraft, the time intervals between aircraft operations can be safely reduced to the order of seconds. The productivity of airports can then be substantially increased. How large the offset distances between operational corridors need to be to have them vortex free, and how airports need to be changed to accommodate an individual e ight-corridor process for landing and takeoff operations, are explored. Estimates are then made of the productivity of an individual e ight-corridor system as a function of the in-trail time interval between operations for various values of wake decay time, runway width, and the velocity of a sidewind. The results cone rm the need for short time intervals between aircraft operations if smaller offset distances and increased productivity are to be achieved.