Operational Evaluation of Traffic Management Advisor Using Statistical Performance Metrics and Simulation Approach

Abstract

The Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) is an air traffic management automation tool designed to allow more aircraft to land during the peak arrival periods by increasing the airspace capacity and minimizing delay via better scheduling, spacing, sequencing, and runway allocation of arrival traffic. This paper evaluates the TMA’s operational performance at George Bush Intercontinental airport in Houston over three daily selected rush-hour periods in the pre- and post-TMA deployments, using both the conventional and newly proposed performance metrics. The performance metrics used for the statistical analysis include: flight distances flown during transition from en route to terminal airspace, runway arrival distributions, and airport arrival traffic distributions. The results obtained from the analysis show that TMA improves the characteristics of arrival air traffic by better runway balancing, improved airport arrival throughput, and more evenly distributed airport arrivals. In addition to the statistical analysis, a model is developed to simulate aircraft transit between arrival arcs and meter fixes, queuing, and runway arrivals during a selected rush hour period in the post-TMA era.