Proposed Air Traffic Control Strategies to Reduce Airport Delay and Improve Capacity

Abstract

The increasing delay in air traffic operations has become an issue of great concern to several research institutions involved in this field. This article presents two air traffic control strategies that have the potential to reduce air traffic delay and thus increase capacity at busy airports. These two methods are based on the more efficient management of gaps between arriving aircraft, an approach that would increase the present system’s rate of departures without reducing time headways beyond the critical value currently maintained between aircraft for safety purposes. The first method assumes the use of critical time headway rather than critical distance headway in managing takeoffs and landings. The second method also assumes the same critical time headway criteria but then optimizes airport capacity by scheduling aircraft based on the available time headways. The benefits of the proposed methods are then demonstrated through the use of simulation models that compare them with the current method.