Enhancing Air traffic flow arrival management by optimizing speed profile: Casablanca Terminal Area Case study

These last decades, Air traffic flow continues considerably increasing with no corresponding improvement in airport infrastructure, which led to the congestion of several terminal areas during approach phases around the world. This matter urges the main international organizations (ICAO, IATA, EUROCONTROL, FAA…) to establish new concepts and methods to guarantee aircraft safety by applying DistanceBased-Separation DBS. Air traffic continues growing which causes further delays or even canceled flights. Also, many space capacities losses have been noticed which made the DBS concept less efficient. To overcome this problem, and to optimize air network management, the use of a new concept has been recommended by SESAR named Time-Based-Separation TBS. In this paper, we will study the effects of speed during the approach phases using a comparison between speed restriction conforming to the reference speed and the possible speed modifications in the margins as defined by the aircraft constructors.