Multipath Runway Exits and Taxiways

As the level of air traffic demand increases in the future, and as advances are made in traffic control technology to accommodate this traffic, the congestion resulting from aircraft moving on the ground may well become the limiting factor in airport capacity.

A family of multi-path concepts, based on the use of parallel redundancy for the key components of the airfield system, has been proposed as a means of ameliorating these problems. With these concepts, the number of runway crossings departure queues, runway exits, and taxiways to/from gates would be increased relative to the design practices of today.

An airport simulation model is used in this study to demonstrate each of the proposed concepts, as applied to six existing U.S. airports, and to develop quantitative estimates of the benefits of reducing delay and increasing throughout.

The results show that while significant improvements in performance can be obtained, the application of a particular concept to a particular airport depends heavily on the characteristics of that airport. The study also demonstrates how, simulation can be used as an effective tool for evaluating airport improvement alternatives at a specific airport.

Author: Everett S. Joline