A case for integrating the CTAS traffic management advisor and the surface management system

Abstract

Arrival and departure capacities are interdependent at many high-traffic airports. At these airports, total capacity may be dynamically reallocated between arrivals and departures in response to the time-varying demands for both types of operations. Moreover, controllers appear to use a working understanding of the tradeoff between arrival and departure capacities in daily practice. This paper investigates how capacity allocation decisions are currently made, the degree to which and the mechanisms by which arrival and departure capacities are controllable, and whether automation could help controllers better match arrival and departure capacities to time-varying demands. Furthermore, this paper studies how the interdependence of capacities affects decision support tools such as the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA), which schedules arrivals subject to the arrival capacity, and the Surface Management System (SMS), which manages departures on the surface. To this point, TMA and SMS have been developed independently. However, at airports where capacities are interdependent, significant benefit may be achieved by integrating TMA and SMS to coordinate how limited airport resources will be shared. A decision aid to help controllers dynamically reallocate total airport capacity between arrivals and departures may achieve TMASMS interoperability. Two possible decision aids are suggested: one which provides arrival and departure demand information not currently available, and one which advises an efficient sequence of capacity allocations, possibly determined collaboratively by air traffic control and the air carriers.