Benefits assessment of integrating arrival, departure, and surface operations with ATD-2

The combined transit of departure flights from the airport surface, through the terminal airspace and merging into overhead en route traffic streams is a major source of delay in the National Airspace System (NAS). This is especially true in metroplex regions where departures and arrivals from/to multiple, proximate airports compete for limited resources (e.g., mixed-use runways, shared departure-fixes, busy overhead traffic streams). Current-day metroplex traffic management practices lead to multiple shortfalls. Under the Airspace Technology Demonstration — 2 (ATD-2) subproject, NASA plans to address these shortfalls by demonstrating Integrated Arrival, Departure, Surface (IADS) technologies and transitioning them to field-implementation. These technologies aim to increase the predictability, efficiency, and throughput of metroplex operations while meeting future air traffic demand. In order to help with effective transition of ATD-2 tools to the field, NASA needs reliable information regarding the operational shortfalls that ATD-2 can address, its benefit mechanisms and relevant performance metrics as well as high-fidelity benefit-cost estimates of implementing the ATD-2 system at major airports in the NAS. This paper describes the results of modeling, simulation and data analysis work performed in order to develop reliable estimates of the benefits of NASA's ATD-2 concept on a nationwide scale based on high-fidelity, realistic models of ATD-2 performance.