NextGen Airspace Procedures Design For High Density Airport Terminal Areas

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) is about to undertake what is being called the Super Density Operations Airspace Design (SDOAD) project, which will enable NASA to more effectively and accurately research NextGen concepts to increase capacity at high volume, complex airports and surrounding airspaces. The agency has awarded a contract to Sensis Corporation to develop airspace definitions, including procedures and routes. 

As part of its NextGen initiative, NASA is examining a number of new operational concepts aimed at addressing current and future capacity challenges at major U.S. airports. In order to best test and evaluate these concepts, airspace definitions, including operational procedures and routes, must be developed. Sensis will be modeling the 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 project will entail characterization of traffic flow route and altitude ranges; analysis, modeling and design of continuous descent and standard arrival procedures as well as future departure procedures; and trajectory based evaluation of the modeled procedures. NASA will use the definitions to accurately test new concepts, including automated arrival concepts.

"Current U.S. airport capacity is far less than the forecast demand. One of the goals of NextGen is to develop new procedures that will unlock capacity by increasing operational efficiencies," said Ken Kaminski, vice president and general manager, Sensis Air Traffic Systems. "This project looks at a complex high traffic metroplex to identify the individual operational characteristics that need to be taken into account to accurately test NextGen capacity improvement concepts before the concepts are further matured."

Sensis has completed numerous modeling, simulation and analysis projects for NASA, JPDO, FAA and other industry and academic organizations. The company can generate current and future air traffic demand scenarios, provide system-wide or regional simulations to evaluate current and future air traffic management concepts, and analyze and visualize simulation results.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.sensis.com