Increasing existing runway capacity is an alternative to laying more concrete to accommodate traffic rising demand. Building on work completed by SESAR 1 on pairwise separation for departure, SESAR 2020 has further optimised wake turbulence separation categories to support safe, consistent and efficient departures, and deliver more predictable operations at Europe’s busiest airports. The solution targets capacity constrained runways during high intensity runway operations by introducing an optimised separation delivery (OSD) tool and its associated procedures to support safe and reliable handling of aircraft departures in accordance with ICAO wake separation rules. Variants of the tool support time-based separations or distance-based separations and spacing such as RECAT-EU (see solution PJ.02-01-04), pairwise separation for departures (PWS-D) (see solution PJ.02-01-06), weather dependent separation for departures (see solution PJ.02-01-03), with airports able to select a combined TBS/DBS variant where required.

SESAR partners demonstrated the solution at large and very large airports including Barcelona, Copenhagen, London-Heathrow, and Vienna where movements range from 260,000 to approximately 475,000 per year. Five real-time simulations were carried out to validate a range of departure operations including pairwise separations, weather-dependent separations and integration with an OSD tool.

The results show that the OSD tool is operationally feasible and acceptable. The tool aided the controllers by providing current wake separations and reducing their workload. This provided them with additional thinking time to perform other tasks. The solution is fully mature and ready for industrialisation and deployment. The OSD tool requires no change to modern aircraft systems but needs to be integrated into the controller working position and current TBS system (if present).

As a result of optimised separations, aircraft departures are more consistent and there is less variability between planned and actual departure time. Fuel burn is reduced due to improved management of taxi-out time and runway capacity is increased.

The solution is available for industrialisation.

BENEFITS

Increased runway capacity and improved predictability

Reduced fuel burn from taxi-out time

Datapack
Contextual note
CBA
OSED Interop: part I - part II - part IV - part V
TS IRS