Effect of reduced minimum spacing application on capacity at Václav Havel Airport, Prague

With the ever-increasing demand for air travel, airspace capacity in the vicinity and relative proximity of airports is reaching its limit. With the progressive development of new technologies and their advancement, industry has reached a situation where it is physically possible to have a large number of aircraft in the airspace. Unfortunately, under current operational conditions, reaching these theoretical capacity values is impossible as it is outside human capability to handle such extreme numbers of aircraft safely and efficiently. This limitation is mainly obvious at peak times when runway and sector capacity is at its limit. This article focuses on the capacity of Václav Havel Airport in Prague (LKPR) and the airspace in its vicinity. It presents a proposal to apply a reduced horizontal separation minimum on the final approach phase of instrument flight rules (IFR) flights down to 2.5 NM. Also, it evaluates the impact of this reduction and describes the necessary changes in airport infrastructure, legislation, and air traffic control unit procedures. The implementation proposal is based on the practices at airports abroad with a reduced 2.5NM spacing already applied. The experiments carried out showed that the idea of reduced spacing at LKPR is feasible and brings an increase airspace capacity while maintaining an adequate level of safety. Under ideal conditions and traffic composition, an increase in the number of aircraft handled by more than 10% per hour can be reached.