Improved throughput with cooperating futuristic airspace management components

An experiment was conducted to integrate airspace management tools that would typically be confined to either the en route or the terminal airspace to explore the potential benefits of their communication to improve arrival capacity. A NAS-wide simulation was configured with a new concept component that used the information to reconfigure the terminal airspace to the capacity benefit of the airport. Reconfiguration included a dynamically expanding and contracting TRACON area and a varying number of active arrival runways, both automatically selected to accommodate predicted volume of traffic. ATL and DFW were selected for the study. Results showed significant throughput increase for scenarios that are considered to be over-capacity for current day airport configurations. During periods of sustained demand for ATL 2018, throughput increased by 26 operations per hour (30%) and average delay was reduced from 18 minutes to 8 minutes per flight when using the dynamic TRACON. Similar results were obtained for DFW with 2018 traffic levels and for ATL with 2006 traffic levels, but with lower benefits due to lower demand.