Airborne Evaluation and Demonstration of a Time-Based Airborne Inter-Arrival Spacing Tool

Published 2019-07-10 From Langley Research Center 5 authors

Attribution

This is the abstract and citation. Full text lives at NASA NTRS — we link out rather than host. All credit to the authors and Langley Research Center.

Abstract

Verbatim from NASA NTRS. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

An airborne tool has been developed that allows an aircraft to obtain a precise inter-arrival time-based spacing interval from the preceding aircraft. The Advanced Terminal Area Approach Spacing (ATAAS) tool uses Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data to compute speed commands for the ATAAS-equipped aircraft to obtain this inter-arrival spacing behind another aircraft. The tool was evaluated in an operational environment at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport and in the surrounding terminal area with three participating aircraft flying fixed route area navigation (RNAV) paths and vector scenarios. Both manual and autothrottle speed management were included in the scenarios to demonstrate the ability to use ATAAS with either method of speed management. The results on the overall delivery precision of the tool, based on a target spacing of 90 seconds, were a mean of 90.8 seconds with a standard deviation of 7.7 seconds. The results for the RNAV and vector cases were, respectively, M=89.3, SD=4.9 and M=91.7, SD=9.0.

Authors

Lohr, Gary W. NASA Langley Research Center
Oseguera-Lohr, Rosa M. NASA Langley Research Center
Abbott, Terence S. NASA Langley Research Center
Capron, William R. Lockheed Martin Corp.
Howell, Charles T. NASA Langley Research Center

Citation: Lohr, Gary W., Oseguera-Lohr, Rosa M., Abbott, Terence S. , et al. (2019). Airborne Evaluation and Demonstration of a Time-Based Airborne Inter-Arrival Spacing Tool. Langley Research Center. NASA NTRS ID 20060004822. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20060004822 ↗