Two new concepts for staggered threshold approach procedures could result in a 10 percent increase in airport capacity, according to a study by Eurocontrol and French air navigation services provider DSNA.
Eurocontrol said Thursday that the validation study was based on scenarios from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and was conducted with support from Thales.
One of the validated concepts, static pairwise separation for departures, “tackled increasing departure traffic, with optimised wake turbulence separation minima and improved separation delivery,” Eurocontrol said.
The second concept, dual threshold, “involved landing aircraft on closely spaced dependent parallel runways, using staggered thresholds to help reduce wake separation minima and increase throughput,” Eurocontrol added.
Both concepts were derived from Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) solutions that deal with improving runway and airport throughput, taking into account weather conditions, wake vortices and environmental and noise issues.
“For a major European airport like Paris Charles de Gaulle, the new concepts, combined with the tools, can deliver significant benefits for departure and arrival peak periods and can make for a 10 percent increase of runway capacity,” Eurocontrol said. “They also bring an added benefit of improved predictability.”
The agency said that, if approved, the concepts and their associated tools will be incorporated into a runway throughput package to help improve performance at European airports. That package is expected to be produced by 2022.
