The Potential of Some Innovative Operational Procedures for Increasing of the Airport Runway Capacity

Abstract

This Chapter has presented the potential of some innovative procedures for increasing the airport runway landing capacity. These have included: i) the ATC tine-based separation rules between landing aircraft on a single runway and ii) the SEAP (Steeper Approach Procedure) to the closely-spaced parallel runways. The methodology consisting of the dedicated models of the “ultimate†runway capacity under the above-mentioned conditions has been developed and applied. In particular, the model of the landing capacity based on the ATC time-based separation rules has been applied to a busy landing runway with the given geometry of the “wake reference airspace†serving the four aircraft FAA/ICAO categories. These have been characterized by the wake vortex parameters (the approach speed, the wing span, and weight), and the runway landing occupancy time under given atmospheric (crosswind) conditions. The results have indicated that the ATC time-based separation rules, based exclusively on the wake vortices decaying to the typical atmospheric circulation, have produced the lowest runway landing capacity. The dynamically selected ATC time-based separation rules based on the current ATC VFR and the influence of the crosswind on the wake vortices have produced the highest runway landing capacity. The ATC time separations based on the wake vortex self-induced descent speed have produced a landing capacity slightly lower than the capacity achieved under the current ATC IFR. Finally, the ATC time-based separation rules based on the impact of the crosswind on the wake vortices have produced a capacity, which is somewhere between the capacities achieved under the current distance-based VFR and the IFR. In all cases, the landing capacity has generally decreased with increasing of the heterogeneity of the aircraft fleet mix and particularly with increasing of the proportion of Heavy aircraft in the fleet mix. The model for the landing capacity of the closely-spaced parallel runways when both CNAP (Conventional Approach Procedure) and SEAP (Steeper Approach Procedure) are simultaneously used has been applied to the traffic scenario of San Francisco International (SFO) airport (US). The results have indicated that SEAP as compared to CNAP has possessed the potential for increasing the IMC landing capacity of given parallel runways for about 27% when only the small aircraft could perform SEAP, and for about 83% when all except Heavy aircraft could perform SEAP. Consequently a gap between the current VMC and IMC landing capacity could be narrowed to about 7%