Wed, Jul 20, 2011
NYSERDA-Funded Project To Reduce Taxi Times, Increase On-Time
Performance, Lessen Fuel Burn And Emissions At Congested
Airports
Excessive delays on the airport tarmac are often caused by ramp
area congestion and limited gate resources. Airlines and airport
ramp operators typically only track gate occupancy based on
predicted gate-in and out times reflected by the schedule and
updates to flight times. Deciding which aircraft are entering or
exiting the ramp area, and at what time, is done manually and
oftentimes with limited information that inadvertently leads to
delays.
A managed gate operations decision support tool for the New York
State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is under
development by Sensis Corporation. The managed gate operations tool
will provide airline and airport ramp operators who are charged
with managing a portion of the taxi-in and taxi-out of aircraft
with automated recommendations on the most advantageous flight
timing and sequencing in the vicinity of the gates. By taking
advantage of automated, optimized recommendations, taxi times can
be reduced; on-time arrivals increased; and fuel burn and CO2
emissions decreased.
The system will employ sophisticated algorithms and proprietary
airport surface prediction capabilities to provide ramp operators
with a recommended order and timing of entry and exit of the gate
area based on live surveillance data, airline schedule information,
predictions of arrival times at the ramp entry, and external
constraints such as any prescribed ramp exit times for departures.
The managed gate operations tool will recommend actions such as
holding certain flights at the gate to allow others to pass,
sending some departures out earlier than scheduled or devising a
sequence of movements that best achieves taxi-time reduction
goals.
"Our preliminary review of data from a major northeastern U.S.
airport indicates approximately 300 in-bound flights a week are
delayed more than five minutes while taxiing to the gate," said Ken
Kaminski, vice president and general manager of Sensis Air Traffic
Systems. "We estimate that for these flights an average taxi-in
reduction of two minutes is possible through use of improved flight
sequences, resulting in a cumulative yearly savings of $1.6 million
for the airlines at that airport."
"NYSERDA has invested in a variety of promising
transportation-related research projects, and all of them have the
same goal – to reduce our use of fossil fuels and our
emissions of greenhouse gases, while growing our clean-energy
economy and creating jobs," said Francis J. Murray Jr., President
and CEO of NYSERDA. "Sensis has a promising new technology that
will not only do all that, but could also make air travel more
convenient. NYSERDA is proud to be behind it."
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