Super Density Operations Airspace Modeling for the Southern California Metroplex

This paper discusses the process for and results of developing a candidate airspace model that describes airport runway configurations, arrival and departure procedures and routes for airplanes arriving to and departing from the Southern California TRACON (SCT). The airspace model includes arrival and departure traffic routes for six major Southern California metroplex airports including Los Angeles International (LAX), Burbank (BUR), Ontario (ONT), Long Beach (LGB), Santa Ana (SNA), and San Diego (SAN). The model comprises a series of airspace model components including: a) the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM)-based characterization of the operating conditions of all six airports throughout 2009 and 2010; b) trajectory data-based modeling of arrival and departure traffic flow routes and altitude ranges and comparison against published Departure Procedures (DPs) and Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARs); c) route and airspace traffic volume analysis to identify the most commonly used arrival and departure procedures and to identify the fraction of total metroplex airspace traffic associated with each procedure; d) modeling and analysis of continuous descent and standard arrival procedures and departure procedures spanning the entire terminal airspace between the en-route airspace and the runway threshold of each airport; and e) trajectory generator-based evaluation of modeled procedures to ensure flyability of modeled procedures.