Point Merge Concept for En Route Air Traffic Flow Management

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to develop and analyze a separation algorithm using the Point Merge approach method at area control for air traffic flow and capacity management as an airborne delay strategy. In this scope, the overflight and departure air traffic from Turkish airspace to Iraqi airspace were surveyed. A total of 104 air traffic movements were simulated and analyzed. Using these flight data, two different simulation scenarios were generated in SIMMOD, a fast-time simulation tool. The first scenario was a baseline scenario encapsulating the separation method that was used by air traffic controllers. The second one was an alternative scenario including the Point Merge approach as a method for the overflight air traffic separation at area control. According to the fast-time simulation results, delay durations and distributions were analyzed in terms of airspace capacity and traffic flow. The fuel consumption for the baseline and alternative scenario was calculated based on the SIMMOD vector deflection model. The frequency-occupancy percentages in both scenarios were also compared to analyze the air-traffic-controller workload. The entire analysis shows that the implementation of Point Merge approach at area control reduces the delays caused by the vector and speed command. It also reduces the frequency occupancy by 38% when compared to the baseline scenario. Fuel saving is also achieved with the Point Merge approach, as it requires fewer vectoring maneuvers due to having fewer vectoring commands. The analyses show that the Point Merge approach can be used at area control to increase the separation distance between en route traffic systematically. This work presents a new application area for Point Merge and adapts it to en route air traffic for separation instead of arrival traffic for approach sequencing purposes.