Results for “Departure” — Page 2

NASA NTRS2000

A Conceptual Design of a Departure Planner Decision Aid

Terminal area Air Traffic Management handles both arriving and departing traffic. To date, research work on terminal area operations has focused primarily on the arrival flow and typically departures are taken into account only in an approximate manner. However, arrivals and departures are highly coupled processes especially in the terminal airspace, with complex interactions and sharing of the same airport resources between arrivals and departures taking place in practically every important terminal area. Therefore, the addition of automation aids for departures, possibly in co-operation with existing arrival flow automation systems, could have a profound contribution in enhancing the overall efficiency of airport operations. This paper presents the conceptual system architecture for such an automation aid, the Departure Planner (DP). This architecture can be used as a core in the development of decision-aiding systems to assist air traffic controllers in improving the performance of departure operations and optimize runway time allocation among different operations at major congested airports. The design of such systems is expected to increase the overall efficiency of terminal area operations and yield benefits for all stakeholders involved in Air Traffic Management (ATM) operations, users as well as service providers.

Anagnostakis, Ioannis↗

NASA NTRS2010

Surface Management System Departure Event Data Analysis

This paper presents a data analysis of the Surface Management System (SMS) performance of departure events, including push-back and runway departure events.The paper focuses on the detection performance, or the ability to detect departure events, as well as the prediction performance of SMS. The results detail a modest overall detection performance of push-back events and a significantly high overall detection performance of runway departure events. The overall detection performance of SMS for push-back events is approximately 55%.The overall detection performance of SMS for runway departure events nears 100%. This paper also presents the overall SMS prediction performance for runway departure events as well as the timeliness of the Aircraft Situation Display for Industry data source for SMS predictions.

Monroe, Gilena A.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Benefit Opportunities for Integrated Surface and Airspace Departure Scheduling: A Study of Operations at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport

NASA is collaborating with the FAA and aviation industry to develop and demonstrate new capabilities that integrate arrival, departure, and surface air-traffic operations. The concept relies on trajectory-based departure scheduling and collaborative decision making to reduce delays and uncertainties in taxi and climb operations. The paper describes the concept and benefit mechanisms aimed at improving flight efficiency and predictability while maintaining or improving operational throughput. The potential impact of the technology is studied and discussed through a quantitative analysis of relevant shortfalls at the site identified for initial deployment and demonstration in 2017: Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Results from trajectory analysis indicate substantial opportunity to reduce taxi delays for both departures and arrivals by metering departures at the gate in a manner that maximizes throughput while adhering to takeoff restrictions due mostly to airspace constraints. Substantial taxi-out delay reduction is shown for flights subject to departure restrictions stemming from traffic flow management initiatives. Opportunities to improve the predictability of taxi, takeoff, and climb operations are examined and their potential impact on airline scheduling decisions and air-traffic forecasting is discussed. In addition, the potential to improve throughput with departure scheduling that maximizes use of available runway and airspace capacity is analyzed.

air traffic management↗

NASA NTRS2015

A Stochastic Scheduler for Integrated Arrival, Departure and Surface Operations in Los Angeles

In terminal airspace, integrating arrivals, departures, and surface operations with competing resources provides the potential of improving operational efficiency by removing barriers between different operations. This work develops a centralized stochastic scheduler for operations in a terminal area including airborne and surface operations using Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm and Monte Carlo simulations. The scheduler handles completing resources between different flows, such as runway allocations, runway crossing, departure fixes, and other interaction way points between arrivals and departures. Meanwhile, the scheduler also takes time-varied uncertainties into account when optimizing schedules. The scheduler is run sequentially to identify the best and robust schedule for the next planning window. Resulting schedules decide the routes, speed or delays, and runway assignments with separation constraints at mergingdiverging waypoints in the air and crossing and separations on runways. The Los Angels terminal area was used as an example. The implementation of this stochastic scheduler for integrated arrival, departure and surface operations is completed. And several preliminary runs are finished for over 1,200 flights in LAX in a typical day. Sensitivity studies on various planning window sizes are presented, which shows that trade-off exits between planning window size and achievable minimum delay. Preliminary results on runway usage are also presented in this abstract. Because arrivals on the outer runways have to be followed by crossings on the inner runways, algorithmic runway allocation prefers inner runways for arrivals and outer runways for departures. More results will be presented in the final paper. And current terminal arrival and departure procedures based on first-come-first-serve procedure will also be set up and used as a baseline for comparison.

integrated scheduler↗

NASA NTRS2018

Operational Impact of the Baseline Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface System Field Demonstration

To address the Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) challenge, NASA is developing and demonstrating trajectory-based departure automation under a collaborative effort with the FAA and industry known as Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2). ATD-2 builds upon and integrates previous NASA research capabilities that include the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA), the Precision Departure Release Capability (PDRC), and the Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSAS) capability. The ATD-2 field demonstration is organized into three phases. Phase I illustrates a Baseline IADS demonstration and includes all components of ATD-2 running in operational environments. Subsequent phases will fuse together strategic scheduling components as well as take into account metroplex considerations. This paper describes the baseline IADS system that was deployed at the end of 2017 and is continuing to run as part of the ATD-2 demonstration taking place at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport (CLT). The primary areas of deployment and system use are in the CLT Air Traffic Control Tower, CLT TRACON, CLT American Airlines ramp tower, Washington Center facility and American Airlines Integration Operations Center (IOC). In addition to describing the functions and capabilities that are part of the baseline IADS system, this paper also provides metrics regarding operational use as well as initial benefits metrics. Benefit metrics continue to be collected and aggregated across the areas of system delay, throughput, taxi time, fuel burn savings, and emissions savings. Furthermore, benefits as a result of common awareness of delays and the impact of takeoff and departure restrictions stemming from traffic flow management initiatives are described. The overall benefit of improved predictability and efficiency as a result of the baseline IADS system demonstration is also discussed.

operational system↗

NASA NTRS1999

Implementation Issues for Departure Planning Systems

The objective of the proposed effort is to investigate issues associated with the design and implementation of decision aiding tools to assist in improving the departure process at congested airports. This effort follows a preliminary investigation of potential Departure Planning approaches and strategies, which identified potential benefits in departure efficiency, and also in reducing the environmental impact of aircraft in the departure queue. The preliminary study bas based, in large part, on observations and analysis of departure processes at Boston, Logan airport. The objective of this follow-on effort is to address key implementation issues and to expand the observational base to include airports with different constraints and traffic demand. Specifically, the objectives of this research are to: (1) Expand the observational base to include airports with different underlying operational dynamics. (2) Develop prototype decision aiding algorithms/approaches and assess potential benefits. and (3) Investigate Human Machine Integration (HMI) issues associated with decision aids in tower environments.

Hansman, R. John↗

NASA NTRS2012

An Initial Comparison of Selected Earth Departure Options for Solar Electric Propulsion Missions

Earth departure options such as the location for deployment, aggregation, and crew rendezvous as well as the type of propulsion leveraged for each mission phase effect overall mission performance metrics such as number of critical maneuvers, mass of propellant to achieve departure, and initial mass required in low Earth orbit. This paper identifies and compares a subset of tactical options for deployment, crew rendezvous, and Earth departure that leverage electric propulsion and hybrid chemical electric propulsion with a goal of improving system efficiency. Departure maneuver specific limitations and penalties are then identified for missions to specific targets for human interplanetary missions providing a better understanding of the impact of decisions related to aggregation and rendezvous locations as well as Earth departure maneuvers on overall system performance.

Merrill, Raymond Gabriel↗

NASA NTRS2011

Flight Departure Delay and Rerouting Under Uncertainty in En Route Convective Weather

Delays caused by uncertainty in weather forecasts can be reduced by improving traffic flow management decisions. This paper presents a methodology for traffic flow management under uncertainty in convective weather forecasts. An algorithm for assigning departure delays and reroutes to aircraft is presented. Departure delay and route assignment are executed at multiple stages, during which, updated weather forecasts and flight schedules are used. At each stage, weather forecasts up to a certain look-ahead time are treated as deterministic and flight scheduling is done to mitigate the impact of weather on four-dimensional flight trajectories. Uncertainty in weather forecasts during departure scheduling results in tactical airborne holding of flights. The amount of airborne holding depends on the accuracy of forecasts as well as the look-ahead time included in the departure scheduling. The weather forecast look-ahead time is varied systematically within the experiments performed in this paper to analyze its effect on flight delays. Based on the results, longer look-ahead times cause higher departure delays and additional flying time due to reroutes. However, the amount of airborne holding necessary to prevent weather incursions reduces when the forecast look-ahead times are higher. For the chosen day of traffic and weather, setting the look-ahead time to 90 minutes yields the lowest total delay cost.

Mukherjee, Avijit↗

NASA NTRS2017

Development of a New Departure Aversion Standard for Light Aircraft

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have recently established new light aircraft certification rules that introduce significant changes to the current regulations. The changes include moving from prescriptive design requirements to performance-based standards, transferring many of the acceptable means of compliance out of the rules and into consensus standards. In addition, the FAA/EASA rules change the performance requirements associated with some of the more salient safety issues regarding light aircraft. One significant change is the elimination of spin recovery demonstration. The new rules now call for enhanced stall warning and aircraft handling characteristics that demonstrate resistance to inadvertent departure from controlled flight. The means of compliance with these changes in a safe, cost-effective manner is a challenging problem. This paper discusses existing approaches to reducing the likelihood of departure from controlled flight and introduces a new approach, dubbed Departure Aversion, which allows applicants to tailor the amount of departure resistance, stall warning, and enhanced safety equipment to meet the new proposed rules. The Departure Aversion approach gives applicants the freedom to select the most cost-effective portfolio for their design, while meeting the safety intent of the new rules, by ensuring that any combination of the selected approaches will be at a higher equivalent level of safety than today's status quo.

Borer, Nicholas K.↗

NASA NTRS2019

Electronic Departure Approval Requests in ATD-2 Daily Operations

The NASA Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 project is investigating Integrated Arrival-Departure-Surface air traffic management through progressive refinement of a surface air traffic management system fielded at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Among the areas under study are departure release-time approval request (APREQ) traffic management initiatives. Scheduling departures at downstream points and complying with approved departure release times helps flights fit smoothly into busy traffic streams. This paper presents a review of APREQ operations and compliance data from daily electronic APREQ negotiations over fourteen months beginning in January 2018. It describes APREQ-compliance improvements observed as the electronic negotiation process has matured and discusses contributing factors, including renegotiation of departure release times.

Call for release↗

NASA NTRS2021

Analysis of Impacts of Terminal Restrictions on Departures in D10 TRACON

The D10 – Dallas-Fort Worth Terminal Radar Approach CONtrol (TRACON) is an air traffic facility that controls and manages aircraft and airspace that consists of multiple airports located in the North Texas area. From an air traffic management standpoint, one of the main challenges in the D10 TRACON is the departure fix capacity as multiple airports compete for resources. This problem is magnified when en route demand/capacity imbalance and inclement weather around the TRACON reduce the capacity at the terminal fixes. This leads to multiple, dynamic Traffic Management Initiative (TMI) restrictions being issued by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) on departing flights. This, in turn, propagates delay to the surface of each airport within the metroplex. The NASA Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) Phase 3 is deployed in D10 to demonstrate new technologies developed to manage the Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) traffic in a metroplex environment where multiple airports are interacting and sharing resources at the terminal boundary. This paper uses the ATD-2 terminal restriction data collected in the D10 TRACON to quantify the impact of restrictions on the demand, analyze the relation between terminal restrictions and departure taxi time on airport surface, and establish relationships between restrictions and surface delay. We found that the restrictions on departure flights have a direct adverse effect on departure excess taxi time on the airport surface.

ATD-2↗

NASA NTRS2021

Analysis of Impacts of Terminal Restrictions on Departures in D10 TRACON

The D10 – Dallas-Fort Worth Terminal Radar Approach CONtrol (TRACON) is an air traffic facility that controls and manages aircraft and airspace that consists of multiple airports located in the North Texas area. From an air traffic management standpoint, one of the main challenges in the D10 TRACON is the departure fix capacity as multiple airports compete for resources. This problem is magnified when en route demand/capacity imbalance and inclement weather around the TRACON reduce the capacity at the terminal fixes. This leads to multiple, dynamic Traffic Management Initiative (TMI) restrictions being issued by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) on departing flights. This, in turn, propagates delay to the surface of each airport within the metroplex. The NASA Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) Phase 3 is deployed in D10 to demonstrate new technologies developed to manage the Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS) traffic in a metroplex environment where multiple airports are interacting and sharing resources at the terminal boundary. This paper uses the ATD-2 terminal restriction data collected in the D10 TRACON to quantify the impact of restrictions on the demand, analyze the relation between terminal restrictions and departure taxi time on airport surface, and establish relationships between restrictions and surface delay. We found that the restrictions on departure flights have a direct adverse effect on departure excess taxi time on the airport surface.

ATD-2↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Quantifying Effects of Departure and Flight Time Uncertainty on Urban Air Mobility Operations

Demand capacity balancing is a key mechanism for maintaining safe and efficient Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations. However, uncertainties such as departure delays and flight time variation may reduce the effectiveness of algorithms used for balancing and detrimentally impact the safety and efficiency of UAM operations. In this paper, the effects of these uncertainties on UAM operations are quantified by modeling a distribution of departure and flight time errors. A route network in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area was used to simulate traffic demand with and without uncertainty. Simulations were conducted with three main models of uncertainty – first uncertainty in departure time delay resulting in late takeoffs, second with uncertainty in flight times in addition to departure delays, and finally, uncertainty in departure times that cause either late or early takeoffs. Each of these simulations were performed using varied standard deviations to fully understand the effects of uncertainties. Results from these simulations were compared to a baseline simulation using the same parameters, but without any uncertainty. The results suggest that both safety and efficiency are significantly impacted by uncertainty even with relatively low uncertainty introduced. These results work towards quantifying the effects of uncertainty in flight scheduling for UAM. They will also aid in the further development of the demand capacity balancing algorithms for UAM operations and associated air traffic management.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Quantifying the Effects of Departure and Flight Time Uncertainty on Urban Air Mobility Operations

Demand capacity balancing is a key mechanism for maintaining safe and efficient Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations. However, uncertainties such as departure delays and flight time variation may reduce the effectiveness of algorithms used for balancing and detrimentally impact the safety and efficiency of UAM operations. In this paper, the effects of these uncertainties on UAM operations are quantified by modeling a distribution of departure and flight time errors. A route network in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area was used to simulate traffic demand with and without uncertainty. Simulations were conducted with three main models of uncertainty – first uncertainty in departure time delay resulting in late takeoffs, second with uncertainty in flight times in addition to departure delays, and finally, uncertainty in departure times that cause either late or early takeoffs. Each of these simulations were performed using varied standard deviations to fully understand the effects of uncertainties. Results from these simulations were compared to a baseline simulation using the same parameters, but without any uncertainty. The results suggest that both safety and efficiency are significantly impacted by uncertainty even with relatively low uncertainty introduced. These results work towards quantifying the effects of uncertainty in flight scheduling for UAM. They will also aid in the further development of the demand capacity balancing algorithms for UAM operations and associated air traffic management.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2017

Real Time Metrics and Analysis of Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface Operations

A real time dashboard was developed in order to inform and present users notifications and integrated information regarding airport surface operations. The dashboard is a supplement to capabilities and tools that incorporate arrival, departure, and surface air-traffic operations concepts in a NextGen environment. As trajectory-based departure scheduling and collaborative decision making tools are introduced in order to reduce delays and uncertainties in taxi and climb operations across the National Airspace System, users across a number of roles benefit from a real time system that enables common situational awareness. In addition to shared situational awareness the dashboard offers the ability to compute real time metrics and analysis to inform users about capacity, predictability, and efficiency of the system as a whole. This paper describes the architecture of the real time dashboard as well as an initial set of metrics computed on operational data. The potential impact of the real time dashboard is studied at the site identified for initial deployment and demonstration in 2017; Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Analysis and metrics computed in real time illustrate the opportunity to provide common situational awareness and inform users of metrics across delay, throughput, taxi time, and airport capacity. In addition, common awareness of delays and the impact of takeoff and departure restrictions stemming from traffic flow management initiatives are explored. The potential of the real time tool to inform the predictability and efficiency of using a trajectory-based departure scheduling system is also discussed.

integrated arrival departure surface operations↗

NASA NTRS2016

Departure Queue Prediction for Strategic and Tactical Surface Scheduler Integration

A departure metering concept to be demonstrated at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) will integrate strategic and tactical surface scheduling components to enable the respective collaborative decision making and improved efficiency benefits these two methods of scheduling provide. This study analyzes the effect of tactical scheduling on strategic scheduler predictability. Strategic queue predictions and target gate pushback times to achieve a desired queue length are compared between fast time simulations of CLT surface operations with and without tactical scheduling. The use of variable departure rates as a strategic scheduler input was shown to substantially improve queue predictions over static departure rates. With target queue length calibration, the strategic scheduler can be tuned to produce average delays within one minute of the tactical scheduler. However, root mean square differences between strategic and tactical delays were between 12 and 15 minutes due to the different methods the strategic and tactical schedulers use to predict takeoff times and generate gate pushback clearances. This demonstrates how difficult it is for the strategic scheduler to predict tactical scheduler assigned gate delays on an individual flight basis as the tactical scheduler adjusts departure sequence to accommodate arrival interactions. Strategic/tactical scheduler compatibility may be improved by providing more arrival information to the strategic scheduler and stabilizing tactical scheduler changes to runway sequence in response to arrivals.

departure scheduling↗

NASA NTRS2019

Departure Approval Request Compliance Effects on Overhead Stream Insertion

Integrated Arrival-Departure-Surface (IADS) air traffic management relies on information sharing and integration between automation systems for efficiency, predictability, and throughput improvements throughout the National Airspace System (NAS). The NASA Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) project supports this effort by integrating SWIM (System Wide Information Management) information and evaluating and refining potential TFDM (Terminal Flight Data Manager) functionality in a surface traffic management system fielded at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport (CLT). Among the IADS areas under study during ATD-2 is the use of electronically negotiated departure times for efficiently inserting flights into overhead traffic streams. Stream-insertion accuracy is important for reducing excessive vectoring that negatively impacts the NAS by increasing controller workload along with aircraft fuel burn and emissions. Departure-time approval requests (APREQs) provide center-approved departure times to allow for smooth stream insertion. In this presentation, TBFM (Time-Based Flow Management) and ATD-2 flight summary data are used to empirically show that APREQ compliance leads to improved stream insertion.

Overhead-Stream Insertion↗

NASA NTRS1987

Simulation of automatic precision departures and missed approaches using the microwave landing system

Results of simulated precision departures and missed approaches using MLS guidance concepts are presented. The study was conducted under the Terminal Configured Vehicle (TCV) Program, and is an extension of previous work by DAC under the Advanced Transport Operating System (ATOPS) Technology Studies Program. The study model included simulation of an MD-80 aircraft, an autopilot, and a MLS guidance computer that provided lateral and vertical steering commands. Precision departures were evaluated using a noise abatement procedure. Several curved path departures were simulated with MLS noise and under various environmental conditions. Missed approaches were considered for the same runway, where lateral MLS guidance maintained the aircraft along the extended runway centerline. In both the departures and the missed approach cases, pitch autopilot takeoff and go-around modes of operation were used in conjunction with MLS lateral guidance.

Feather, J. B.↗