Analysis of airport-runway availability

This paper describes generic airport runway arrival and departure availability models and provides results of the models on nine airports. The models utilize a three tiered hierarchical approach (runway/configuration/airport). They include local navigational aids, and instrument landing systems (ILS). They take into consideration runway length, visibility capability, experienced visibility conditions, runway geometry, runway configurations and configuration utilization. The models described provide the means for assessing the impact of equipment outages on airport availability. They have demonstrated airport availability sensitivity to individual facility outages, runway configurations and runway visibility capability. The analyses conducted utilizing these models provide FAA with the data for formulating decisions on the allocation of financial resources for the most effective improvement of airport runway availability.