A Metroplex Capacity Enhancement Strategy through Coordinated Use of Runway Dependencies

An airport metroplex consists of two or more airports in close proximity whose arrival and departure operations are highly interdependent. Consequently, dependencies arise from interacting traffic streams in the shared airspace. These dependencies complicate the task of managing metroplex resources, resulting in reduced capacity and congestion. A generic metroplex runway dependency metric is developed in this paper to compactly measure how runway features affect traffic. Metroplex capacity diagrams were generated to measure capacity envelopes and also to study the most frequently used and the highest capacity runway configurations at the New York/New Jersey metroplex (NYNJ). Ideas from a new operational concept called the ‘flexible operations concept’ were used to identify options to enhance capacity at NYNJ. Under this concept, arrival flights can land at any of the constituent airports of a metroplex instead of a fixed airport. An optimization technique that combines the runway dependency metric, capacity diagrams and the flexible operations concept is developed so that operations can be spread optimally across metroplex runways. Example problems are presented to demonstrate the optimization scheme. Results from the proof-of-concept studies indicate that flexible arrivals are a viable option to enhance metroplex capacity during low departure periods.