Deterministic Models for Degraded Airside Capacity and Delays

Abstract

This paper presents deterministic models for estimating airspace and airport capacity and delays during equipment outages. The National Airspace System (NAS) is very complex and consists of almost 48,000 reportable facilities and services that support air traffic control with very diverse functions and technologies. To better understand NAS performance and develop a methodology for estimating degraded capacity, previous studies about equipment outages and about airspace and airport performance are first reviewed. A deterministic aircraft separation model is used to estimate degraded capacity. It is useful for quick estimates of the number of aircraft operations per facility under some predefined conditions (i.e., mile-in-trail separation and aircraft mix), but does not estimate delays. A deterministic queuing approach is used for estimating delays due to single outages for a hypothetical airport and terminal airspace area. It can also estimate the number of aircraft experiencing queuing and the queue duration, while considering arrival and service rates that vary over time.