A departure regulator for closely spaced parallel runways

Increased efficiency at airports is necessary to reduce delays and in so doing reduce emissions. Many of the busiest airports in the nation have at least one pair of closely spaced parallel runways with one runway dedicated to arrivals and the other to departures. Closely spaced parallel runways experience a large decrease in capacity under instrument conditions, because they can no longer operate independently. In order to mitigate this decrease and increase efficiency, we propose a departure regulator for runways with this configuration. The proposed departure regulator makes use of data from precision tracking systems such as ADS-B to issue automated or semi-automated departure clearances. Assuming sequential departure separations are sufficient for clearance, the regulator will automatically issue or advise the controller to issue the departure clearance as soon as the arrival on the adjacent runway has descended below its decision height. By issuing the departure clearance earlier, the departure regulator reduces the gap between each pair of arrivals that is required to insert a departure. By decreasing the gap, the regulator increases the probability that a departure clearance can be issued. A simulation was created to model the effects of the regulator and quantify the resulting increases in capacity. Results indicate that all forms of the regulator would provide significant gains of between 13% and 31% in capacity over the current operating paradigm. The results also indicate that the capacity gains are greatest at high arrival rates. Therefore, implementation of the departure regulator could significantly decrease the congestion at many major airports when they are in instrument meteorological conditions.