AIAA 2003-2677 Formulation of a Method to Assess Capacity Enhancing Technologies

The demand for air travel is expanding beyond the capacity of existing airports and air traffic control. This excess traffic often results in delays and compromised safety. Therefore, a number of initiatives to improve airport capacity and throughput have been proposed. However, in order to assess the impact of these technologies on commercial air traffic one must move beyond the vehicle to a system-ofsystems point of view. This top-level perspective must include consideration of the aircraft, airports, air traffic management and airlines that make up the airspace system. In addition to the analysis of each of these components and their interactions, a thorough investigation of capacity and throughput technologies requires due consideration of other pressures such as economics, safety and government regulations. Furthermore, the air traffic system is inherently variable with constant changes in everything from fuel prices to the weather. Thus, the development of a modeling environment to be used in the evaluation of technological impacts while encompassing all these sources of uncertainty is the subject of this paper.