Design Characteristics of a Terminal Departure Scheduler

A terminal departure scheduler designed to work with varying degree of precision across many airports is required to operate with high levels of uncertainty, multiple disparate departure constraints and substantial volatility. This paper describes fast time simulation modeling of terminal departure traffic to assess performance of a terminal departure scheduler. A prototype terminal departure scheduler is developed and exposed to a range of air traffic constraints, departure time uncertainty and terminal transit time uncertainty. Terminal transit error and surface error are varied to assess the robustness of scheduler design to these variations. Current day manual terminal departure scheduling practices are simulated and compared against performance of a prototype terminal departure scheduler. Simulation is used to assess the tradeoffs of sequence and schedule freeze methodologies in the terminal departure environment. Sequence freeze capability demonstrates lower average delay than schedule freeze capability for expected levels of OFF time compliance in future automation. Dallas/Fort Worth TRACON simulation results indicate the possibility of a delay reduction of 35 percent and increased departure throughput of 17 percent for commonly used terminal departures constraints. The results of this study are used to inform the design of a terminal departure scheduler which will undergo evaluation at NASA’s North Texas Research station.