NEXTOR II

This paper analyzes current trends in aircraft characteristics and fleet mix and the implications of these trends on airport design. The airline industry is continuously exploring new ways of efficiently and economically operating their fleets in order to overcome the economic and financial pressures of a competitive operating environment. In response to these challenges, airlines are introducing aircraft into their fleets with lower fuel consumption and geometric characteristics to improve aircraft performance and efficiency. In the near future, the efficiency of gate operations and other...

The presented methodology has two fundamental goals: first, to foster greener design practices among airport managers, planners, and designers, and second, to establish a dynamic dialogue between all airport stakeholders, while overcoming the shortcomings of traditional environmental impact assessments and thus ensuring capacity enhancement. The innovative aspects of the methodology are the combination of a flexible implementation strategy, the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) with cost and utility functions, and a structured definition of environmental sustainability...

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is a congressionally mandated initiative to modernize the U.S. air traffic control system through satellite-based technologies that can increase the precision of aircraft flight paths, radar displays, and operating times, improving capacity, efficiency, predictability, flexibility, environmental effects, and safety. Several critical milestones have been achieved, but the long time frame for implementation raises challenges.

The current operational practice in scheduling air traffic arriving at an airport is to adjust flight schedules by delay, i.e. a postponement of an aircraft's arrival at a scheduled location, to manage safely the FAA-mandated separation constraints between aircraft. To meet the observed and forecast growth in traffic demand, however, the practice of time advance (speeding up an aircraft toward a scheduled location) is envisioned for future operations as a practice additional to delay. Time advance has two potential advantages. The first is the capability to minimize, or at least reduce,...