Objective measurement assessment of departure advisories for ramp controllers from a human-in-the-loop simulation

Publication Date

6-1-2020

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Title

AIAA AVIATION 2020 FORUM

DOI

10.2514/6.2020-3204

First Page

1

Last Page

11

Abstract

NASA has developed and demonstrated an integrated arrival, departure, and surface concept and technology for efficient air traffic management in busy terminal environments under the Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) subproject. In April/May 2019, NASA conducted a human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation with ramp and tower controllers having experience at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The purpose of this HITL was to evaluate the impacts of various surface metering goals in ramp operations at DFW and test new features of the ATD-2 ramp controller decision support tools. This paper evaluates the quantitative metrics from the simulation results related to airport performance and surface metering given various departure scheduling advisories for ramp controllers. The objective measurements compared include the controller’s compliance with the target times for pushback and spot arrival, the number of metered flights, aircraft gate hold and taxi time, runway throughput, and the number of aircraft on the surface. The simulation results show that there were no statistically significant benefits from surface metering at DFW for airport performance due to several simulation artifacts notably different from real operations. Considering controller workload and situation awareness, following either gate pushback or spot arrival advisory could be a better metering option than utilizing both advisories when surface metering is applied at DFW.

Keywords

Human In The Loop, Runway Configuration, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Trajectory Based Operations, Airspace, Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X, Southwest Airlines, Taxiway, Federal Aviation Administration, Hub Airports

Department

Research Foundation

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