Download or read book Impacts of Technology on the Capacity Needs of the U S National Airspace Systems written by Raymond A. Ausrotas and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Impacts of Technology on the Capacity Needs of the US National Airspace System written by Raymond A. Ausrotas and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Air passenger traffic in the United States showed remarkable growth during the economic expansion of the 1980's. Each day a million and a quarter passengers board commercial flights. The boom coincided with the advent of airline deregulation in 1978. This drastic change in the industry has inspired professional and newspaper articles, graduate student theses, and books which have discussed the causes, effects, costs, and benefits of deregulation with predictably mixed conclusions. Economists, who like to predict the future by exercising econometric models, are finding that conditions in air transportation have become too dynamic (chaotic?) for their models to cope. Certainly the future of the air transportation industry is unclear. There has been, however, an unmistakable trend toward oligopoly, or, as industry spokesmen describe it, "hardball competition among the major airlines." This trend has been accompanied by formations of hub fortresses owned by these survivors. Air traffic has always been concentrated in a few large cities; airplanes will go where there is a demand for them. But airline (rather than traffic) hubs have created artificial demand. Up to seventy percent of travellers boarding airplanes in the hub cities do not live anywhere near these cities - in fact, they may have no idea at which airport they are changing planes. Most passengers do not care, while travel cognoscenti soon learn to avoid certain airports (and airlines which frequent these airports). A hub airport is a frenzy of activity for short periods of time during the day, as complexes of airplanes descend, park and interchange passengers, and take off. Then the airport lies quietly. If observers were to arrive at a major hub between times of complexes, they would be perplexed to hear that "this is one of the most congested airports in the world." Thus congestion and its evil twin, delay, are not constants in the system. Rather, they appear only if a number of conditions conspire to manifest themselves simultaneously, or nearly so. First, the weather must deteriorate from visual flight conditions to instrument flight conditions. Then, this must occur near peak demand conditions at the airport. Of course, some airports in the Unites States are always near peak conditions, among them the so-called slot constrained airports: New York's La Guardia and Kennedy, Washington's National, and Chicago's O'Hare. When weather goes bad at these airports or other major hubs during complexes, ripple effects start nearly all over the country, because some airlines have now designed schedules to maximize utilization of their airplanes. Very little slack time is built into the schedules to account for potential delays, although "block-time creep" exists: the phenomenon that travellers discover when they arrive at their destinations ahead of schedule (if they happen to leave on time). This "creep" protects the airlines from being branded as laggards by the DOT's Consumer On-Time Performance Data hit list. Thus a combination of management practices by airlines (which place great demand on terminal airspace over a concentrated period of time) and mother nature (which provides currently unpredictable behavior of weather near the airport) conspire to limit the capabilities to handle arrivals and departures at various airports below the numbers that had been scheduled. Travellers complain that the schedules aren't being met, and if enough people complain to Congress, or if the travellers themselves happen to be members of Congress, a national problem appears. How much of a problem is this? In 1988 there were 21 airports, according to the FAA, which exceeded 20,000 hours of annual aircraft delay, perhaps 50,000 hours per year, or 140 hours per day. (One, Chicago's O'Hare, exceeded 100,000 hours.) These airports, in turn, averaged 1,000 operations (arrivals and departures) per day, so that each operation would have averaged about 8 minutes of delay. At O'Hare, for example, 6% of all operations experienced in excess of 15 minutes of delay. (In excess means just that - there is no knowledge of how much "in excess" is.) Conversely, this means that at that most congested airport in the United States, 94% of all airplanes arrive or depart with less than 15 minutes of delay. However, airline delay statistics may be similar to the apocryphal story of the Boy Scout troop which drowned wading across a creek which averaged two feet in depth. There are estimates that on a dollar basis, delay accounts for a $3 billion cost to airlines, or a net societal cost of $5 billion if travellers' wasted time is included. Since in their best years U.S. airlines make about $3 billion in profit, reducing delay is a sure-fire way for airlines to climb out of their all too frequent financial morasses, as well as diminishing their passenger frustrations. Even though all of the numbers mentioned in the paragraphs above are subject to substantial caveats, it is indisputable that on certain days during the year the air transportation system seems to come to a crawl, if not a halt. Travellers either find themselves sitting at airport lounges observing cancellation and delay notices appearing on the departure and arrival screens, or sitting in airplanes (on runways or at gates) being told that there is an "air traffic delay." Old-timers grumble that the only difference twenty years of technology improvements has made to the U.S. airspace system is that the wait is now on the ground instead of circling in the air near their destinations. To the casual observer, it would appear that a number of solutions exist to solve this problem. The most obvious is to pour more concrete: more airports, more and longer runways, more taxiways, more gates and terminals. This is analogous to widening highways and building more interstates for ground transportation congestion. The concrete solution, alas, runs into both financial and citizen roadblocks. It is very expensive - the latest airport coming off the drawing boards (Denver International) carries a tag of some $2 billion, with about $400 million of that in bonds being backed by a new funding creature, the Passenger Facility Charge (a head tax of up to 3 dollars assessed to every passenger enplaning at an airport - voluntary or not). The citizen roadblock is community objections to airport noisiness. The bill creating the PFC in 1990 also carried with it a mandate for the FAA to create a national noise policy so that individual airports would not wreak havoc with the whole system by creating their own local operational rules, such as curfews. The bill also attempted to pacify airport neighborhoods by setting a deadline for all U.S. aircraft to be quiet(er) - complying with Stage 3 regulations by the year 2000. More damaging than financial difficulties are the anti-noise sentiments, and the concomitant not-in-my-backyard syndrome, that are at the forefronts of protests of either an alert citizenry, or New Age Luddites, when any expansion plans are made public. Whatever one's view, it is a crowd vocal and seemingly powerful enough in local political circles to stop any large- scale progress to ground solutions of the congestion problem. That, then, leaves the air. It is intuitive that if airplanes were closer spaced than they are now, much more traffic would move through a given area in the same amount of time, and consequently airplanes would land (and take off) quicker, reducing any waiting (queue) time. This obviously increases airport noise levels. There are two problems with this approach. The first trick is to accomplish this safely. Safety has at least two dimensions: there is the physical, i.e., airplanes should not run into each other (or the ground, as a result of weather disturbances and wake vortices); and pilots (and controllers) should feel they are still in control of the situation, even after separation standards are reduced. The first aspect is mostly a matter of technology, the second mostly a matter of human factors. But if traffic moved quicker and noise of the aircraft is not reduced, the same citizens who had vehemently opposed the construction of additional ground facilities would once again rise in righteous anger and demand a stop to the more efficient techniques of flying airplanes which have caused an increase in the noise levels in their neighborhood. They, too, must be considered. This report will attempt to address some of the issues outlined above. The focus will be on technology and where it is best suited to provide an equitable and efficient expansion of capacity in the air transportation system. Ultimately, the discussion will be centered on NASA's potential contributions to solving the capacity problem

Download or read book Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 1168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Monthly Catalogue United States Public Documents written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 1484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book U S Involvement in Aerospace Research written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Air Transport System Analysis and Modelling written by Milan Janic and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2000-12-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a comprehensive coverage, Air Transport System Analysis and Modelling is a unique text dealing with the analysis and modelling of the processes and operations carried out in all three parts of the air transport system, namely, airports, air traffic control and airlines. Seen from a planners point of view, this book provides insights into current methods and also gives details of new research. Methods are given for the analysis and modelling of the capacity, quality and economics of the service offered to users and includes illustrative analytical and simulation models of the systems operations supported by an appropriate analysis of real world events and applications. Undergraduates and graduates in the field of air transport planning and technology, applied operations research and applied transport economics will find this book to be of interest, as will specialists involved with transport institutes and consulting firms, policy makers dealing with air transport and the analysts and planners employed at air transport enterprises.

Download or read book Aeronautical Engineering written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Maintaining U S Leadership in Aeronautics written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1998-10-07 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the completion of the National Research Council (NRC) report, Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Aeronautics: Scenario-Based Strategic Planning for NASA's Aeronautics Enterprise (1997), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology requested that the NRC remain involved in its strategic planning process by conducting a study to identify a short list of revolutionary or breakthrough technologies that could be critical to the 20 to 25 year future of aeronautics and space transportation. These technologies were to address the areas of need and opportunity identified in the above mentioned NRC report, which have been characterized by NASA's 10 goals (see Box ES-1) in "Aeronautics & Space Transportation Technology: Three Pillars for Success" (NASA, 1997). The present study would also examine the 10 goals to determine if they are likely to be achievable, either through evolutionary steps in technology or through the identification and application of breakthrough ideas, concepts, and technologies.

Download or read book Handbook of Transportation Policy and Administration written by Jeremy Plant and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few decades, the field of transportation has changed dramatically. Deregulation and greater reliance on markets and the private sector has helped to reconfigure the transport industries, while the rise of intermodal goods and global commerce has produced efficiencies of operation and a greater interdependence among transport modes. In a

Download or read book Assessment Activities written by United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Aeronautical Engineering A Cumulative Index to a Continuing Bibliography supplement 287 written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book National Airspace System Plan written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Subcommittee on Aviation and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Government Reports Announcements Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1993-02 with total page 1446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Investigating Safety Impacts of Energy Technologies on Airports and Aviation written by Stephen B. Barrett and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2011 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 28: Investigating Safety Impacts of Energy Technologies on Airports and Aviation explores physical, visual, and communications systems interference impacts from energy technologies on airports and aviation safety. The energy technologies that are the focus of this report include the following: solar photovoltaic panels and farms, concentrating solar power plants, wind turbine generators and farms, and traditional power plants.

Download or read book Government Reports Annual Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 1828 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sections 1-2. Keyword Index.--Section 3. Personal author index.--Section 4. Corporate author index.-- Section 5. Contract/grant number index, NTIS order/report number index 1-E.--Section 6. NTIS order/report number index F-Z.

Download or read book Assessing the Risks of Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems UAS into the National Airspace System written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When discussing the risk of introducing drones into the National Airspace System, it is necessary to consider the increase in risk to people in manned aircraft and on the ground as well as the various ways in which this new technology may reduce risk and save lives, sometimes in ways that cannot readily be accounted for with current safety assessment processes. This report examines the various ways that risk can be defined and applied to integrating these Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It also identifies needs for additional research and developmental opportunities in this field.