ANALYSIS ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER'S CAPACITY FOR SEPARATION VARIATION

摘要

Usually, an airport administrator's concern about increasing airfield capacity is focused on changes in infrastructure, such as building more runways. However, the bottleneck for this situation may be the capacity of the air traffic controllers. This paper provides an analysis of the variation of air traffic controller capacity, by diminishing the aircraft minimum allowable separation. Reorganized ATC Mathematical Model Simulator (RAMS) which is air traffic simulation software that allows for the acquisition of all necessary parameters to calculate the capacity, was used. All the input data (number of arrivals and departures, routes, etc.) come from the Brasilia International Airport, the 3rd largest Brazilian airport in number of flights. The methodology used to calculate the controller capacity was based on that of the Brazilian Air Force. It was possible to obtain an increase of 17.6% in capacity, diminishing the separation between aircraft from 5 nm to 2 nm. Finally, this work presents some comments about the available aircraft and air traffic technologies and concepts that will make it possible to safely diminish separation.