An Airport Adaptation Methodology and Arrival Throughput Analysis of Terminal Metering Concepts

This paper describes the modeling and analysis of arrival benefits at the John F. International Kennedy Airport (JFK) terminal airspace due to hypothesized application of a set of possible concepts and technologies (C&Ts). Some C&Ts intend to increase throughput by improving arrival conformance at metering points. This paper describes a model which uses the arrival conformance of each C&T as a means for estimating and comparing potential throughput benefits. Current traffic is scheduled by a Traffic Management Unit (TMU) with help from the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) at each Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). TMA was assumed to be in use only during periods of high demand. By analyzing these time periods, an airport model based on unimpeded throughput was extracted and TMA scheduling parameters can be found. A saturated demand set was calculated from the airport model. Based on the saturated demand, a set of schedules were generated over a range of key parameters by a scheduling emulator. Based on the schedules, the metering conformance for every aircraft was calculated for every C&T’s differing arrival conformance methods. If an aircraft was too far out of conformance, it resulted in a controller intervention. A Controller Intervention Rate (CIR) over all aircraft was calculated for every C&T. The CIR was compared with the baseline TMA parameters and was then used to estimate how much throughput may be increased for each C&T, thus relating arrival conformance and throughput improvements.