Arrival/Departure Capacity Tradeoff Optimization: a Case Study at the St

The busiest European and US airports are still a major bottleneck in the air transportation network. Optimizing utilization of existing airport capacity during periods of congestion, to maximize the airport throughput and minimize delays, is a challenging task. It is important for both strategic (several hours into the future) traffic flow management (TFM) and tactical air traffic control (ATC). One of the more effective approaches to optimizing the existing airport capacity is dynamic allocation of arrival and departure capacities by trading off between them at airports for which this is an option. The theoretical aspects of the problem are addressed in [2] – [4]. A novel automated decision support tool, arrival/departure tradeoff optimization tool, which will assist the traffic flow management specialists select the best arrival and departure strategies is being developed at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) within the scope of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) program. The prototype tool was tested and evaluated in a case study at the St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL). The case study is the first on-site experiment in which the optimization technique and decision support tool were tested in a real time situation, allowing for the strategic, coordinated management of airport arrival and departure capacity and arrival and departure traffic. This paper presents the results of the case study.