Research on Theoretical Model of En Route Sector Capacity

Abstract

With the rapid development of the aviation industry and the continual increase of air traffic flow in China, air traffic controllers are facing tremendous pressure to maintain a safe, orderly and rapid flow of air traffic. Study in ATC sector capacity assessment is an important research field in air traffic management. Airspace management and air traffic service units should carry out airspace capacity assessment in a scientific way, and make efforts to meet air traffic demands during normal and peak hours. This paper studies en route sector capacity assessment under procedure control, and it attempts to establish an en route control sector capacity assessment model based on a mathematical modeling method. It tries to calculate the theoretical capacity of an en route control sector according to the flight level crossing ratio. Air traffic control is closely related to the safety and expedition of aircraft operation. In air traffic management, airspace is divided into air traffic control sectors. Air traffic controllers are crucial for the safe operation of aircraft in certain airspace. The number of aircraft is rapidly increasing in China; therefore, determining airspace capacity is essential to reducing increasing airspace pressure and ensuring flight safety. In this paper, the authors develop an en route sector capacity assessment model. When calculating en route capacity, they take two cases into consideration: capacity with and without flight level crossing. Taking route sector structure into consideration, the authors study the correlation between selected routes and their respective share of traffic flow to get an estimated en route sector capacity value.