Routing in the near-terminal area to achieve reductions in airport community noise impact

Abstract

The introduction of advanced airport terminal-area guidance technology, such as the Microwave Landing System (MLS), will permit aircraft to fly ground tracks through airport communities with significantly greater precision than is possible with current avionics and flight control procedures. It is expected that this improved guidance capability will permit ground tracks to be safely flown which are designed to avoid major population centers in an airport community. This paper will present a general method for defining ground tracks in an airport community which minimize noise impact without violating operational constraints dictated by such factors as air traffic control, aircraft performance, pilot workload, passenger acceptance, etc. A model of airport community noise impact, recently developed at NASA Langley Research Center, has been used to quantitatively assess the reduction in noise impact associated with such flight procedures for a number of airport operating scenarios and airport community population distributions. Results presented in this paper indicate the degree of noise impact reduction which it is practical to expect from noise-minimal aircraft routing in the near terminal area.