Observation and Analysis of Departure Operations at Boston Logan International Airport

The Departure Planner (DP) is a concept for a decision-aiding tool that is aimed at improving the departure operations performance at major congested airports. In order to support the development of the DP tool, the flow constraints and their causalities in the departure process - primarily responsible for generating inefficiencies and delays- need to be identified. This thesis is an effort to identify such flow constraints and gain a deep understanding of the underlying dynamics of the departure process based on field observations and data analysis at Boston Logan International Airport. It was observed that the departure process is a complex interactive queuing system, where aircraft queues form as a manifestation of the flow constraints. While departure delays were observed in all airport components (runways, taxiways, ramps and gates), it was concluded that the flow constraints manifest mainly at the runway system, which exhibits the largest delays and queues. Major delays and inefficiencies were also observed due to downstream flow constraints, which propagate back and block the departure flow from the airport. It was also observed that the airport system is a highly controlled system as the air traffic controllers manage the flow constraints. The air traffic controllers were, therefore, identified as another flow constraint due to their workload and their main strategies in managing the flow constraints were observed. Based on the observations, a core departure process was identified consisting of two main elements: a queuing element generated by the flow constraints and a control element representing the air traffic controller actions. This core process was abstracted using a controlled queuing framework, where the air traffic controller actions are represented by blocking the flow of aircraft in order to maintain safe operation of the airport resources according to the ATC rules and procedures and regulate the outbound flow to constrained downstream resources. The controlled queuing framework was used to analyze the departure process highlighting the queuing dynamics and the control behavior for different flow constraint examples. In conclusion, a number of implications for the Departure Planner and other improved methods for departure operations are inferred from the observations and analysis.This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center under grant NAG 2-1128

Cooperative Automation Supporting Pilot-Dispatch Negotiation of Enroute Trajectory Change Requests

The advent of advanced technologies in communication, navigation, and surveillance is enabling more integration between the aircraft and the ground systems in managing air traffic operations. As a result, automation has evolved to provide the flight crew, air traffic controllers, and traffic flow managers with capabilities for collaborating on information access, analysis, and decision making. In this paper, we investigate different cooperative schemes between these agents, supported by automation, in managing dynamic trajectory changes while the flight is en route to improve flight and system performance. The analysis was conducted using an abstract cognitive tasking framework to identify trajectory change tasks independently from the agent performing them. Cooperation schemes were then derived by assessing different levels of cooperation on each task between the air and ground agents and their automation. The assessment was based on which automation-supported agent is more capable of performing the task and the expected benefit mechanisms that result from cooperating. The cooperation schemes were compared based on a qualitative, but objective, assessment of the benefits expected from cooperation

Trajectory Planning by Preserving Flexibility: Metrics and Analysis

In order to support traffic management functions, such as mitigating traffic complexity, ground and airborne systems may benefit from preserving or optimizing trajectory flexibility. To help support this hypothesis trajectory flexibility metrics have been defined in previous work to represent the trajectory robustness and adaptability to the risk of violating safety and traffic management constraints. In this paper these metrics are instantiated in the case of planning a trajectory with the heading degree of freedom. A metric estimation method is presented based on simplifying assumptions, namely discrete time and heading maneuvers. A case is analyzed to demonstrate the estimation method and its use in trajectory planning in a situation involving meeting a time constraint and avoiding loss of separation with nearby traffic. The case involves comparing path-stretch trajectories, in terms of adaptability and robustness along each, deduced from a map of estimated flexibility metrics over the solution space. The case demonstrated anecdotally that preserving flexibility may result in enhancing certain factors that contribute to traffic complexity, namely reducing proximity and confrontation

Presentations from the 1996 MIT/industry cooperative research program annual meeting.

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Urban Air Mobility Airspace Integration Concepts and Considerations

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) - defined as safe and efficient air traffic operations in a metropolitan area for manned aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems - is being researched and developed by industry, academia, and government. Significant resources have been invested toward cultivating an ecosystem for Urban Air Mobility that includes manufacturers of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, builders of takeoff and landing areas, and researchers of the airspace integration concepts, technologies, and procedures needed to conduct Urban Air Mobility operations safely and efficiently alongside other airspace users. This paper provides high-level descriptions of both emergent and early expanded operational concepts for Urban Air Mobility that NASA is developing. The scope of this work is defined in terms of missions, aircraft, airspace, and hazards. Past and current Urban Air Mobility operations are also reviewed, and the considerations for the data exchange architecture and communication, navigation, and surveillance requirements are also discussed. This paper will serve as a starting point to develop a framework for NASA's Urban Air Mobility airspace integration research and development efforts with partners and stakeholders that could include fast-time simulations, human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations, and flight demonstrations

Observation and Analysis of Departure Planning Operations at Boston Logan International Airport

The Departure Planner (DP) is a concept for a decision-aiding tool that is aimed at improving the departure operations performance at major congested airports. In order to support the development of the DP tool, the flow constraints and their causalities in the departure process – primarily responsible for generating inefficiencies and delays- need to be identified. This thesis is and effort to identify such flow constraints and gain a deep understanding of the underlying dynamics of the departure process based on field observations and data analysis at Boston Logan International Airport. It was observed that the departure process is a complex interactive queuing system, where aircraft queues from as a manifestation of the flow constraints. While departure delays were observed in all airport components (runways, taxiways, ramps and gates), it was concluded that the flow constraints manifest mainly at he runway system, which exhibits the largest delays and queues…National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Cente

A Conceptual Design of a Departure Planner Decision Aid

Terminal area Air Traffic Management handles both arriving and departing traffic. To date, research work on terminal area operations has focused primarily on the arrival flow and typically departures are taken into account only in an approximate manner. However, arrivals and departures are highly coupled processes especially in the terminal airspace, with complex interactions and sharing of the same airport resources between arrivals and departures taking place in practically every important terminal area. Therefore, the addition of automation aids for departures, possibly in co-operation with existing arrival flow automation systems, could have a profound contribution in enhancing the overall efficiency of airport operations. This paper presents the conceptual system architecture for such an automation aid, the Departure Planner (DP). This architecture can be used as a core in the development of decision-aiding systems to assist air traffic controllers in improving the performance of departure operations and optimize runway time allocation among different operations at major congested airports. The design of such systems is expected to increase the overall efficiency of terminal area operations and yield benefits for all stakeholders involved in Air Traffic Management (ATM) operations, users as well as service providers