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Modeling and Optimization of Terminal Area Utilization by Assigning Arrival and Departure Fixes
Abstract
Terminal area is very important airspace resource due to the limited capacity. Because several arrival traffics from different origin airport merge at arrival fix, the queue for arrival stream generally is formed at arrival fix and the inherent delay is propagated further out. Moreover it leads that arrivals do path stretching and speed adjustment to absorb that delay with consuming much more fuel than it was required. However this developed delay is often not distributed evenly, therefore some fixes experience unbearable delays while other fixes might idle. In this paper, we suggest a new approach to assign fix to resolve this issue while minimizing total consumed fuel and environmental impact in terminal airspace. The proposed model assigns arrival and departure fix for each arrival and departure respectively, considering the fix and runway capacity constraints. The proposed optimization model is beneficial to improve terminal area efficiency and local environment. In addition, this model functions more effectively at severe weather condition when existing unbalanced traffic demand.
... He used simulation to estimate the advantages and feasibility of flexible airspace reconstruction to cope with the traffic overload caused by weather deviation and the baseline situation without airspace reconstruction [5]. In 2013, Kim pointed out that flight delays will propagate along the terminal area to the waypoints, and improved the utilization rate of the terminal area by a multi-objective optimization algorithm that assigns waypoints to approach flights [6]. Bosson used a multi-stage complex planning algorithm to construct a sequencing model of approach and departure flights, and improves the efficiency of the use of airspace in the terminal area by optimizing the order of approach and departure flights in 2014 [7]. ...
Hazardous weather has a great impact on the airspace operation of the terminal area, which will lead to a reduction in the utilization of the airspace of the arrival operation. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the airspace utilization of the terminal area in hazardous weather. This paper analyzed the impact of blocky hazardous weather area on flight path, flight distance and flight time, and established a calculation model for the terminal area arrival airspace utilization rate in the blocky hazardous weather area based on the flow volume ratio based on the time and space constraints of the terminal area airspace operation. We selected a control terminal which was affected by the blocky hazardous weather area, then used the model to calculate the approach airspace utilization rate and compared it with the approach airspace utilization rate under normal weather conditions. The results show that the evaluation results of the established model can reflect the actual operating conditions.
... Sidiropoulos et al. designed the dynamic terminal area route optimization method when studying the route network of London multi-airport terminals, and established the route network priority evaluation mode based on the analytic hierarchy process [22]. In addition, Kim et al. proposed the terminal arrival and departure fix optimization model in combination with the airspace structure optimization of the terminal area, and the results showed that the optimized fixes can effectively reduce fuel consumption and environmental impact [23]. Then, Man et al. found a complete and efficient framework capable of dynamically modelling the integration of arrival and departure trajectories on parallel runways, and modelled the conflict detection and resolution in presence of curved trajectory and radius-to-fix merging process [24]. ...
In order to reduce the environmental impact of aircraft operation in the terminal area, this paper researched the route optimization method. Firstly, this paper constructed the air pollutant emission and noise assessment model, and the flight performance model. Secondly, aiming at reducing air emissions and noise level, the multi-objective terminal area route optimization model is established based on the principles of flight safety and flight procedure construction. Then this paper puts forward the path optimization method of emission and noise reduction of terminal area route network, through the research on the priority setting method of terminal area approach and departure route planning. The route segmentation method and NSGA-II algorithm are employed to solve the problem. Finally, a numerical case study is carried out for the Shanghai terminal area, and yields the following results: (1) Compared with the original route network, the optimized route network in the terminal area can significantly reduce emission and noise by reducing pollutant emission by 51.4% and noise influence by 21.5%; (2) The method can also reduce fuel consumption by 60.5% and the total route length by 21.1%.
... From Table 1, we observe that certain PEK arrival fixes experience heavy utilization, whereas other arrival fixes are not utilized to the same extent. This indicates an imbalance in fix loading, which has a direct impact on airspace capacity and efficiency 22,23 . However, simply knowing arrival fix and runway metrics, even in conjunction with the standard arrival procedures is not enough to characterize the terminal airspace. ...
Airports are being developed and expanded rapidly in China to accommodate and promote a growing aviation market. The future Beijing Daxing International Airport (DAX) will serve as the central airport of the JingJinJi megaregion, knitting the Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei regions together. DAX will be a busy airport from its inception, relieving congestion and accommodating growth from Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK), currently the second busiest airport in the world in passengers moved. We aim to model terminal airspace designs and possible conflicts in the future Beijing Multi-Airport System (MAS). We investigate standard arrival procedures and mathematically model current and future arrival trajectories into PEK and DAX by collecting large quantities of publicly available track data from historical arrivals operating within the Beijing terminal airspace. We find that 1) trajectory models constructed from real data capture aberrations and deviations from standard arrival procedures, validating the need to incorporate data on historical trajectories with standard procedures when evaluating the airspace and 2) given all existing constraints, DAX may be restricted to using north and east arrival flows, constraining the capacity required to handle the increases in air traffic demand to Beijing. The results indicate that the terminal airspace above Beijing, and the future JingJinJi region, requires careful consideration if the full capacity benefits of the two major airports are to be realized.
This paper proposes a framework for integrating scheduling between arrival, departure, and surface operations to address the drawbacks of domain segregated scheduling. The framework organizes scheduling tasks by time horizon rather than domain. The four-level framework hierarchy includes the configuration schedule, flight schedule, flight schedule update, and schedule conformance. Current NASA research gaps within this framework are discussed and key areas are proposed where future research should focus to facilitate scheduler integration.
This study estimates the potential benefits of continuous descents for more than 480,000 flights to 25 major airports in the National Airspace System. While reduced fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are expected for these procedures, the benefits during periods of congestion are not well understood. To address this gap, baseline trajectories were constructed from flight plan and track data for flights arriving at 8 busy terminal areas. Two types of continuous descent trajectories were modeled. One enforced a constant distance-to-fly constraint to simulate uncongested operations. The other enforced a constant time-to-fly constraint to simulate congested operations. Potential fuel savings were calculated for different continuous descent scenarios. Analysis of the distance-constrained trajectories showed that fuel savings was distributed unevenly among the flights. The estimated savings was less than 25 kg for over 45% of the flights, and less than 100 kg for over 87% of the flights. The time-constrained trajectories showed 70-85% less potential savings than the distance-constrained trajectories. Prioritization of the improvements necessary to execute continuous descents during periods of congestion must rely upon analysis of a sufficient sample of operations, representative of many days, aircraft types, and traffic demand levels.
Accurate modeling of airplane fuel consumption is necessary for air transportation policy-makers to properly adjudicate trades between competing environmental and economic demands. Existing public models used for computing terminal-area airplane fuel consumption have been shown to have substantial errors, potentially leading to erroneous policy and investment decisions. The method of modeling fuel consumption proposed in this paper was developed using data from a major airplane manufacturer. When compared with airline performance/operational data, this proposed method has been shown to accurately predict fuel consumption in the terminal area. The proposed method uses airplane performance data from publicly available environmental models supported by the Federal Aviation Administration and others. The proposed method has sufficient generality to protect the proprietary interests of the manufacturer, while still having adequate fidelity to analyze low-speed airplane operations in the terminal area. This improved methodology will enable more informed decisions by policy-makers seeking to account for the effects of fuel consumption and airplane emissions on plans for future airspace and airport designs.
The Traffic Management Advisor (TMA), the sequence and schedule tool of the Center/TRACON Automation System (CTAS), was evaluated at the Fort Worth Center (ZFW) in the summer of 1996. This paper describes the challenges encountered during the various phases of the TMA field evaluation, which included system (hardware and software) installation, personnel training, and data collection. Operational procedures were developed and applied to the evaluation process that would ensure air safety. The five weeks of field evaluation imposed minimal impact on the hosting facility and provided valuable engineering and human factors data. The collection of data was very much an opportunistic affair, due to dynamic traffic conditions. One measure of the success of the TMA evaluation is that, rather than remove TMA after the evaluation until it could be fully implemented, the prototype TMA is in continual use at ZFW as the fully operational version is readied for implementation. Introduction This pa...
In general, air traffic volume from different directions is unbalanced. If all aircrafts use the shortest path to runways, then some runways will be overloaded, resulting unbearable delays while other runways maybe idle, resulting resources wasted. Therefore, one of the important jobs of air traffic controllers is to assign runways for landings and takeoffs so that limited runway resources can be effectively utilized. This paper presents a novel optimization model that minimizes total emissions in terminal airspace. The model assigns a runway for each landing and takeoff and sequences the landing and the takeoff on the same runways, accounting for safety separation rules, transition costs from fixes to runways, and taxi costs from runways to gates. This paper also includes details of mathematical formulations and the computation method of emissions. At the end of the paper, we provide a numerical example for planning landings and takeoffs at the Detroit international airport. The optimization results show that ight delays reduce as much as 44.7%, much greater than the runway sequence without runway assignment. Meanwhile, the emissions of optimal solution reduce as much as 25.4%. The proposed model for strategically planning terminal airspace operations is beneficial to improve airport efficiency and local environments. Copyright © 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.
A stochastic runway planning model has been developed for scheduling of airport runway operations in the presence of uncertainty, where stochastic attributes include pushback delay, time spent on taxiway, and deviation from estimated arrival time. The runway planning problem is modeled as a process in two stages, where the first stage uses a two-stage stochastic program to find an aircraft weight-class sequence that maximizes throughput while simultaneously achieving a desirable sequence for the second planning stage without having exact information on the stochastic parameters. In the second planning stage, individual aircraft are assigned to the sequence after exact information becomes available. The computational study shows that under certain assumptions, if the schedule is dense enough, there is a potential benefit of using the stochastic runway planner over a first-come, first-served planning policy or a deterministic runway planner.
Air traffic operations at and around major airports in the United States are in need of improvement. From the perspective of arrivals, when one or more runways are in great demand, unnecessary delay and emissions occur during peak periods at major airports while other runways at the same airport are operating under capacity. The primary cause of this imbalance in runway utilization is that traffic flow into and out of terminal areas is asymmetric (as a result of airline scheduling practices) and arrivals are typically assigned to the runway nearest the fix through which they enter the terminal area. From the perspective of departures, delays and emissions are incurred because arrivals take precedence over departures with regard to the utilization of runways (despite the absence of binding safety constraints) and because arrival trajectories often include level segments that ensure "procedural separation" from arriving traffic while planes are not allowed to climb unrestricted along the most direct path to their destination. This paper presents an optimization model for simultaneously assigning aircraft to runways and scheduling the arrival and departure operations on these runways such that the total emissions produced in the terminal area and on the airport surface are minimized. Model constraints include such real-world considerations as the minimum separation required between successive aircraft and the precedence relationships that aircraft flying a common route take. An analysis of simulation results indicates that implementation of this model could result in as much as a 30% reduction in arrival emissions with a corresponding 3% reduction in departure emissions.
The basic objective of arrival sequencing and scheduling in air traffic control automation is to match traffic demand and airport capacity while minimizing delays. The principle underlying practical sequencing and scheduling algorithms currently in use Is referred to as first-come-first-served (FCFS). Although this principle generates fair schedules when delays must be absorbed, it does not take into account airline priorities among individual flights. The development of new scheduling techniques that consider priorities expressed by air carriers will reduce the economic impact of air traffic management (ATM) restrictions on the airlines. This will also lead to increased airline economic efficiency by affording airlines greater control over their individual arrival banks of aircraft. NASA is exploring the possibility of allowing airlines to express relative arrival priorities to ATM through the development of new sequencing and scheduling algorithms that take into account airline preferences. A method of scheduling a bank of arrival aircraft according to a preferred order of arrival instead of according to an FCFS sequence based on estimated time of arrival at the runway is investigated. past-time simulation is used to evaluate this scheduling method in terms of the algorithm's ability to produce a preferred order of arrival and In terms of its ability to minimize delays (scheduling efficiency). Results show that compared with FCFS scheduling, the alternative scheduling method is often successful in reducing deviations from the preferred bank arrival order while causing little or no increase in delays that must be absorbed.
Air traffic management (ATM) must often place restrictions on arriving flights transitioning from en route airspace to highly congested terminal airspace. The restriction of arrival traffic, or arrival flow management, is performed without regard for the relative priority that airlines may be placing on individual flights. The development of new arrival how management techniques that consider priorities expressed by air carriers will reduce the economic impact of ATM restrictions and lead to increased airline economic efficiency by allowing airlines to have greater control over their individual arrival banks of aircraft. NASA is exploring the possibility of allowing airlines to express relative arrival priorities to ATM through the development of new sequencing and scheduling algorithms ;that take airline arrival preferences into account. This paper introduces the concept of "delay exchange" which is defined as a fair method of accommodating an airline request for an earlier arrival by advancing the landing time of one aircraft while simultaneously delaying another aircraft from the same airline. Fast-time simulation is used to evaluate the feasibility of scheduling these delay exchanges among individual arriving aircraft. Results show that the probability of successfully time advancing an aircraft is highest for an algorithm that allows delay exchange between aircraft arriving at any feeder fix. Results also show that the success of this algorithm varies with airport acceptance rate, indicating that the performance of this algorithm is a function of traffic density as well as the position of the aircraft within the traffic rush interval.
An optimal airport arrival scheduling algorithm, which works within a hierarchical scheduling structure, is presented. This structure consists of schedulers at multiple points along the arrival route. Schedulers are linked through acceptance rate constraints, which are passed up from downstream metering points. The innovation in this algorithm is that these constraints are computed by using an Eulerian model-based optimization scheme. In this scheme an aggregate airspace model is derived online. Optimization based on predictions of this model is used to compute the optimal acceptance rates at all metering points, so that the airport throughput is maximized while keeping sector counts within limits. This rate computation removes inefficiencies introduced in the schedule through ad hoc acceptance rate computations. The scheduling process at every metering point uses its optimal acceptance rate as a constraint and computes optimal arrival sequences by using a combinatorial search algorithm. We test this algorithm in a dynamic air-traffic environment, which can be customized to emulate different arrival scenarios. Results from Monte Carlo simulations show improved performance over first-come, first-served ordering for different values of key parameters such as arrival aircraft mix, average arrival rate, maximum position-shift constraint, and level of uncertainty in estimated time of arrival prediction.
We propose a job-shop scheduling model with sequence dependent set-up times and release dates to coordinate both inbound and
outbound traffic flows on all the prefixed routes of an airport terminal area and all aircraft operations at the runway complex.
The proposed model is suitable for representing several operational constraints (e.g., longitudinal and diagonal separations
in specific airspace regions), and different runway configurations (e.g., crossing, parallel, with or without dependent approaches)
in a uniform framework. The complexity and the highly dynamic nature of the problem call for heuristic approaches. We propose
a fast dynamic local search heuristic algorithm for the job-shop model suitable for considering one of the different performance
criteria and embedding aircraft position shifting control technique to limit the controllers/pilots’ workload. Finally, we
describe in detail the experimental analysis of the proposed model and algorithm applied to two real case studies of Milan-Malpensa
and Rome-Fiumicino airport terminal areas.
The multiple runway planner (MRP) is a tool that has been developed at Boeing for system effectiveness analysis of arrival sequencing, scheduling, and runway assignment. Given a set of arrivals, with pre-determined meter fix assignments and estimated times of arrival (ETA), the algorithm determines runway assignments and preferred sequences and schedules at the fixes and at the assigned runways. Separation constraints are imposed at all the fixes and, again, for wake vortex purposes, at the runways. The algorithm uses an optimization-based approach which can be configured to represent a variety of objective functions and levels of automation. In addition, the algorithm can be configured to emulate the center TRACON automation system (CTAS) traffic management advisor (TMA) tool developed by NASA
A novel scheduling algorithm has been designed and coded to
optimize arrival aircraft sequences and schedules. This algorithm,
called the implicit enumeration (IE) scheduling algorithm, has been
adopted as the foundation of the Traffic Management Advisor which is
part of the Center/Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) Automation
System (CTAS). Because of the dynamic nature of air traffic control, the
IE scheduling algorithm has been developed to operate in a dynamic
feedback environment. The algorithm structure which controls the
scheduling feedback also provides the platform for other advances. The
criteria to be optimized can be specified flexibly, and can be varied
on-line. Another feature of the algorithm applies to the situation found
at many high-density airports, where multiple runways are used for
arrivals simultaneously. The approach taken in the algorithm allows the
planning process to be expanded to include runway assignment. Initial
results from using the IE algorithm for runway assignment indicate that
significant performance enhancements are possible when both runway and
sequence assignments are considered in the scheduling process. This
algorithm was first used in early 1992 at the Denver Air Route Traffic
Control Center for the first stages of the field evaluation of CTAS by
the FAA
This paper formulates a new approach for improvement of air
traffic flow management at airports, which leads to more efficient
utilization of existing airport capacity to alleviate the consequences
of congestion. A new model is presented, which first considers the
runways and arrival and departure fixes jointly as a single system
resource, and second considers arrivals and departures simultaneously as
two interdependent processes. The model takes into account the
interaction between runway capacity and capacities of fixes to optimize
the traffic flow through the airport system. The effects are achieved by
dynamic time-dependent allocation of airport capacity and flows between
arrivals and departures coordinated with the operational constraints at
runways and arrival and departure fixes as well as with dynamics of
traffic demand and weather. Numerical examples illustrate the potential
benefits of the approach