Airspace Structure Study with Capacity Compensation for Increasing Diverse Operations

Future aircraft designs with a wide range of performance parameters, such as electric and supersonic aircraft, will have to be accommodated in traditional airspace designs in the future. Allowing an individual optimization of traditional approach speed profiles has a similar, broadening effect on approach speed characteristics. The resulting necessity of integrating Increasing Diverse Operations (IDO) will lead to a reduction in capacity at hub airports, as larger gaps will have to be inserted between aircraft with very different speed profiles. This is due to the large range of different approach speeds that IDO encompasses. Such a development will present a challenge for airports, which are already operating at or near their capacity limit. An alternative routing towards an intercept point at a late stage of the final approach can provide two approach options with low interference for subsequent traffic. Based on traffic data from London Heathrow, this study evaluates the performance in terms of runway capacity for different constellations of this procedure. Moreover, the biphasic evaluation, conducted through theoretical calculations for a constant separation distance and a fast-time simulation for a constant separation time, yielded key findings that facilitated the development of an optimized procedure for a traffic mix with significant speed differences to compensate IDO-related capacity losses as far as possible.