A Potential Impact Analysis of ESTOL Aircraft on Newark Airport Operations

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is investigating technological and operational concepts for introducing Extreme Short Takeoff and Landing (ESTOL) aircraft into a future US National Airspace System (NAS) civil aviation environment. In support of NASA, this analysis is a preliminary examination of the potential operational impact of ESTOL on airport and airspace capacity and delay for flights to and from Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR), New Jersey. The analysis uses the AvTerminal computerized fast-time modeling capability to simulate terminal and en route airspace arrival and departure and runway system takeoff and landing operations for ESTOL and conventional traffic demand sets and procedures. The traffic demand sets describe KEWR flight schedules for a 24-hour study period in 2016. The existing arrival and departure routes and profiles and runway use configurations are modeled, with the assumption jet-powered, large-size civil ESTOL aircraft use a short runway and standard turboprop arrival and departure procedures. With these rules, the conventional jet and ESTOL aircraft are procedurally separated from each other geographically and in altitude during terminal airspace approach and departure operations, and each use a different arrival runway. AvTerminal uses 3-degree of freedom aircraft point-mass modeling to simulate 4-dimensonal flight trajectories in the en route and terminal airspace and runway system. AvTeminal has traffic flow management and air traffic control simulation modules that apply airspace and runway aircraft pair-wise minimum separation rules and spacing restrictions. AvTeminal implements its unique Focal-point Scheduling Process to sequence, space and delay aircraft to resolve overtake and spacing conflicts among aircraft in the airspace and airport system serving KEWR. AvTerminal asseses acceptance rates and delay magnitude and causality at selected locations, including en route outer boundary fixes, terminal airspace arrival and departure boundary fixes, terminal airspace arrival merge and departure diverge fixes, and runway landing and takeoff runways. The analysis compares the resulting capacity impacts, flight delays and sources between ESTOL and conventional operations. Results indicate ESTOL has significant capability to increase arrival capacity and reduce delays by taking advantage of otherwise underused airspace and runways where available.