Improving Terminal Operations—Benefits of RNAV Departure Procedures at Dallas-Fort Worth and Hartsfield-Jackson Atanta International Airports
November 2007
Ralf H. Mayer, The MITRE Corporation
Kevin R. Sprong, The MITRE Corporation
ABSTRACT
Incremental implementation of terminal Area
Navigation (RNAV) procedures has yielded
significant operational benefits at major U.S.
airports. Key prerequisites of these benefits are the
advanced flight automation systems that are
available on the majority of today's commercial
and corporate aircraft as well as the presently
achievable conformance of flight operations to the
RNAV route structures. Key implementation sites
of RNAV procedures include Dallas-Fort Worth
(DFW) and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (ATL)
International airports. The RNAV Standard
Instrument Departure (SID) procedures
implemented at these airports have promised and
delivered more efficient utilization of available
runways and constrained departure airspace by
enabling diverging departure operations. This
paper investigates the RNAV route conformance
currently observed in RNAV departure operations
at DFW and ATL and reviews the mechanism that
enables operational benefits. It describes the Monte
Carlo modeling approach taken to evaluate
operational changes, the methodology used to
validate model performance with radar data, and
presents estimates of departure capacity and delay
reduction benefits. The results of the research
suggest that capacity gains of about 10 additional
departures per hour and runway are possible
resulting in significant benefits to operators when
RNAV procedure designs enable airports to
conduct diverging departure operations. The paper
also compares key performance metrics of the
model to performance metrics obtained from
extensive pre- and post-implementation operational
evaluations. The evaluation results were found to
confirm expected operational changes, validate user
benefits resulting from diverging RNAV departure
operations, and firmly support further terminal
procedure implementation at other airports.
Additional Search Keywords
Area Navigation, RNAV, SID, FMS, terminal operations, departure operations, benefit mechanism, divergence, benefits analysis, metrics, capacity, delay
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