Maximizing airport runway throughput via sequencing arrival schedule

• Main Author: Lin, Chuanwen
• Other Authors: Lye Sun Woh
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Aeronautical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/65711
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Worldwide air traffic has been experiencing a significant growth of 4 to 8 percent yearly since 2005, despite a number of challenges faced by the industry. As a result of this growth, there is a substantial increase in delay at nearly all major airports. Conventional approaches to accommodate the increase in air traffic include building new airports and adding new runways at existing airports. However, due to environmental and geographic limitations, these are no longer viable solutions to counteract increasing air traffic. In view of the limitations in expanding capacity through addition of airports and runways, effective use of the existing capacities to increase runway throughput is key to minimizing aircraft delays. This report aims to show that there are limitations to the existing First Come First Serve (FCFS) aircraft landing policy, and that there is an optimal aircraft landing schedule that is able to maximize airport runway throughput. In particular, this report focuses on studying how rescheduling of arrival aircrafts through Sequencing Arrival Schedule (SAS) method can maximize the Singapore Changi Airport’s runway throughput efficiency during its peak hour operation. To study the effectiveness of SAS method, 3 case scenarios are proposed: Case 1 – Cross batch mix landing, Case 2 – Batch by batch smooth landing and Case 3- Sequencing Arrival Schedule. A fast time simulation software AirTop is used to perform three test scenarios by varying the type of aircraft used for the test, namely the medium, heavy and super heavy aircrafts, on each of the three cases proposed. With the simulation data gathered from the Airtop, analysis work is carried out on a total of nine test scenarios. This report will also explore and discuss some of factors that can affect the throughput capacity of the airport runway, such as holding techniques and standard separation distance. Through an understanding of how the different factors can have an impact on the throughput capacity of the airport runway, this report will outline some ways which the SAS method can be further improved and subsequently be applied to other areas like surface management.