A Decision Support Tool for the Pushback Rate Control of Airport Departures

Airport surface congestion control has the potential to mitigate the increase in taxi times and fuel burn at major airports. One possible class of congestion control strategies predicts the departure throughput, and recommends a rate at which to release aircraft pushbacks from the gate. This paper describes the field-testing of these types of strategies at Boston Logan International Airport, focusing on the communication of the suggested rate to the air traffic controller, and additional support for its implementation. Two Android tablet computers were used for the field-tests; one to input the data and the other to display the recommended rate to the air traffic controllers. Two potential decision-support displays were tested: a rate control display that only presented a color-coded suggested pushback rate and a volume control display that provided additional support to the controllers on the number of aircraft that had called-ready and had been released. A survey of controllers showed that they had found the decision-support tool easy to use, especially the additional functionality that is provided by the aircraft volume control display. The field tests were also found to yield significant operational benefits showing that such a congestion control strategy could be effective in practice.United States. Federal Aviation AdministrationNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 0931843

No more conflicts: the development of a generic airport model in a sequence-optimization framework

International audienceComponents of the airport airside such as runways, taxiways and aprons, have a significant impact in the total capacity of the airport system, where capacity is usually considered as maximum number of air traffic movements or number of passengers accommodated in a given period of time. Operations on the airside impact in the propagation of delay and consequently in the perceived level of service by passengers the terminal buildings. This paper put the focus on the airside operations at airports. A methodology for modelling operations on the ground and the successive optimization is proposed. The methodology presented in this paper is generic enough in the sense that it can be applied to any airport. The objective of this work is to come up with a generic tool that can be used by air traffic controllers in order to minimize conflicts on the ground and consequently increase the airport capacit

Implementation of an Optimization and Simulation-Based Approach for Detecting and Resolving Conflicts at Airport

International audienceIn this paper is presented a methodology that uses simulation together with optimization techniques for a conflict detection and resolution at airports. This approach provides more robust solutions to operative problems, since, optimization allows to come up with optimal or suboptimal solutions, on the other hand, simulation allows to take into account other aspects as stochasticity and interactions inside the system. Both the airport airspace (terminal manoeuvring area), and airside (runway taxiways and terminals), were modelled. In this framework, different restrictions such as speed, separation minima between aircraft, and capacity of airside components were taken into account. The airspace was modeled as a network of links and nodes representing the different routes, while the airside was modeled in a low detail, where runway, taxiways and terminals were modeled as servers with a specific capacity. The objective of this work is to detect and resolve conflicts both in the airspace and in the airside and have a balanced traffic load on the ground

Investigating Surface Performance Trade-offs of Unimpeded Taxiways

Optimizing usage of unimpeded taxiways is a near-term operational change to mitigate emission impact on aviation and increase efficiency at airports. An unimpeded taxiway is a path for an aircraft to taxi around an active runway. Unimpeded taxiways provide benefits such as increased departure throughput, increased safety, reduced surface congestion, more efficient taxi-in procedures, and thereby also yield environmental benefits. The goals of this work are to investigate the use of current taxiways, examine surface performance and fuel burn trade-offs, and to develop a decision-support model based on potential fuel savings of unimpeded taxiways. This study analyzes unimpeded taxiway use at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL), Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport (DFW), and Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) using ASDE-X data from 10 September 2012 to 28 February 2013. The trends and patterns of aircraft taxi routes show the unimpeded taxiway is used the most during peak arrival and peak departure hours. This study provides decision-makers at the operations level a practical guidance tool with the necessary information to effectively use unimpeded taxiways and conventional taxiways from an environmental perspective. Decision rules were developed to maximize fuel savings. The decision scenario analysis concluded that the most promising decision rule at ATL, DFW, and DTW to yield the most environmental benefit is based on multiple factors. The multi-factor decision rule based on terminal destination, arrival time, and aircraft type resulted in an average aircraft fuel savings of 8.1% to 20.4%