Terminal area capacity enhancement concept

The predicted increase of air-traffic poses a significant capacity problem at the United States major airports, which have current capacity limitations. To accommodate for this, the closely spaced parallel approach (CSPA) operation has been proposed as a viable solution for the future demands of the year 2020. As part of efforts to understand the capacity constraints on the terminal area, several factors are to be examined closely if capacity gain of two folds is expected. CSPA operations allows for such capacity gain, however, it requires construction of additional runways, meeting the Wake Vortex separation standards by an alternative approach to the existing in-trail separation and analysis on enabling communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) technologies that ensure safe CSPA operations. The student design team at George Mason University is working with the Raytheon Company on the terminal area capacity enhancement concept (TACEC) design and completed its work in May 04