Measuring Operational Air Navigation System Performance in the 21st Century: Arrival Management

Abstract

Air transportation is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Although ICAO is proposing a set of operational performance indicators to assess air navigation system performance, there is a need to refine these indicators to account for novel concepts and changing operational paradigms. This paper introduces a spatial-temporal framework for arrival management. As assessing the efficiency of arrival management will include the extension of the analysis horizon beyond multiple hundreds of nautical miles from the airport, a purely time based approach will inevitably include aspects of the sequencing techniques deployed. This paper explores the spatial-temporal concept on the basis of an empirical post-operational use case analysis. The feasibility of this approach is studied for three European airports. These airports have been chosen as they show differences in the operational concept of deployed arrival management techniques. In particular, being able to compare the different techniques will allow to support decision makers in the selection of appropriate arrival management strategies for varying air traffic demand and operational contexts. The data analytical approach presented in this paper enhances today's approach to measuring performance in the arrival phase and provides a basis for the further development of associated performance indicators. The results obtained allow for quantifying the effectiveness of the chosen operational concepts for each airport context. The associated efficiency performance measure provides a basis for deliberating on the chosen concept vis-à-vis other emerging approaches. This paper shows the general feasibility of the framework and approach to measuring the tempo-spatial performance in the arrival phase of flight. In particular, the augmentation of the classical time-based approach supports a finer assessment of the efficiency of service provision, but also the impact on airspace users and their planning for arriving at airports with different arrival management concepts. The further validation will include the application of the approach to a variety of operational contexts as part of the multi-lateral benchmarking activities under ICAO. This will increase the number of operational contexts and concepts. The studied approach is also a candidate for inclusion into the suite of performance measures under the EUROCONTROL Performance Review System.