Optimal Metering Policies for Optimized Profile Descent Operations at Airports

Optimized Profile Descent (OPD) is an arrival procedure for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), which has been demonstrated to effectively decrease noise, emissions and fuel costs. Reference [1] identifies optimal sequencing and spacing policies for OPD operations under uncertainty and shows that the use of these policies at given metering points is expected to result in potential savings of 1015% in fuel consumption over the current OPD practice. In this paper, we develop models to further increase such potential savings through optimal metering policies, which include identification of the optimal number and locations for such metering points. We present an algorithmic framework based on implementations of a stochastic dynamic program and a nonlinear stochastic integer program to identify best metering point configurations, and present some numerical results based on actual traffic information at a major U.S. airport. Keywordsrunway operations; optimized profile descent; continuous descent arrival; stochastic dynamic programming