Improving departure throughput by dynamically adjusting inter-arrival spacing

LaGuardia airport (LGA) in New York has many unique challenges that create excess taxi-out delays. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential benefit that could be gained by tactically adjusting the Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSS) schedule to precisely manage inter-arrival spacing to maximize the number of departures per arrival pair. Three strategies for dynamically adjusting arrival schedules are proposed in this paper: Delay Control, Delay and Advance, and No Slack Capacity. The benefits of these strategies were examined on actual traffic data at LGA. The results showed that by applying these strategies, a 10 to 60% increase in departures and a reduction in unutilized departure capacity (gaps) could be achieved during the airport's busiest six-hour period. Significant increases in departure throughput would improve air traffic operations. Furthermore, the concept could be used to resolve temporal mismatches between departure capacity and demand which also cause excessive departure delays.