March 2008 I a c W ncreasIng Irport apacIty Ithout I a s ncreasIng Irport Ize By Viggo Butler Project Director: Robert W. Poole, Jr. POLICY STUDY 368 Reason Foundation Reason Foundation’s mission is to advance a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law. We use journalism and public policy research to influence the frameworks and actions of policymakers, journalists, and opinion leaders. Reason Foundation’s nonpartisan public policy research promotes choice, competition, and a dynamic market economy as the foundation for human dignity and progress. Reason produces rigorous, peer-reviewed research and directly engages the policy process, seeking strategies that emphasize cooper- ation, flexibility, local knowledge, and results. Through practical and innova- tive approaches to complex problems, Reason seeks to change the way people think about issues, and promote policies that allow and encourage individuals and voluntary institutions to flourish. Reason Foundation is a tax-exempt research and education organization as defined under IRS code 501(c)(3). Reason Foundation is supported by volun- tary contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations. The views are those of the author, not necessarily those of Reason Foundation or its trustees. Copyright © 2008 Reason Foundation. All rights reserved. R e a s o n F o u n d a t i o n Increasing Airport Capacity Without Increasing Airport Size By Viggo Butler and Robert W. Poole, Jr. Executive Summary The United States faces a real possibility of running out of airport capacity—not everywhere, but in particular at a number of the 35 most important airports in the national system. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, these are airports in large, urbanized areas such as New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The problem is seldom lack of capacity in airport terminals. Large airports are financially self-supporting, and are generally able to finance terminal expansions. Rather, the problem is one of adding needed runway capacity. Without enough runway capacity, these airports will face increasingly serious problems of delay, which already plague the New York airports. Most of the critically important urban-area airports are hemmed in by expensive real estate. Adding a new runway of between one and two miles in length, spaced the required 4,300 feet from existing runways, typically requires large amounts of land, which many airports do not own. This often leads to divisive, protracted battles with airport neighbors to acquire the needed land. Even when the airport eventually prevails (which is often not the case), the long delay in adding the new runway can mean a decade or more of extra delays, as well as construction costs significantly increased due to inflation over the ensuing years. What if there were ways to expand the runway capacity of an airport without expanding the airport’s footprint? That would mean that an urban area could receive the economic benefits that come along with continued growth in air service without the protracted battles over land acquisition, and without the long delays attendant to such battles. The purpose of this policy study is to explore an array of new technologies that hold significant promise for expanding the functional capacity of airport runways. These technologies—most of which already exist—are planned for incorporation into a completely new air traffic control system to replace the current system over the next 20 years. The overall concept of operations and system architecture is being developed by a federal inter-agency planning group, the Joint Planning & Development Office, advised by aerospace/electronics industry teams. This new approach is being called the NextGen system. Currently, runway capacity is limited by five factors: (cid:131) In-trail separation of aircraft—how closely aircraft can be spaced one after another when approaching the runway; (cid:131) Lateral separation, especially in bad weather, between aircraft approaching the same airport on parallel runways; (cid:131) The sequencing and separation of departing and landing aircraft on runways that intersect (e.g., at LaGuardia); (cid:131) The sequencing of departing and arriving aircraft on a single runway; and (cid:131) The sequencing of aircraft approaching airports located in close proximity to one another, where one aircraft must cross the path of another aircraft landing at a nearby airport (e.g., in the Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York metro areas). In broad outline, NextGen addresses these constraints in the following ways: (cid:131) Use already developed but not fully implemented aircraft communication devices to safely reduce the physical separation of aircraft; (cid:131) Use specialized approach and departure procedures, now being implemented at a few locations, as the standard for all approaches and departures; (cid:131) Improve the management of aircraft wake turbulence in the airport vicinity; and (cid:131) Use these same technologies with central computer systems to manage aircraft movements on the ground. This study explains the core NextGen technologies and procedures that can be used to increase airport runway capacity without expanding the airport’s geographical boundaries. It then shows how these technologies could be applied to address specific types of runway capacity problems, using San Francisco International and the three main New York airports as illustrative examples. The same technologies also offer realistic prospects for reducing the noise impact of airports on their neighbors. These benefits will be accompanied by savings for aircraft operators—on fuel use, crew time, and aircraft utilization. The reductions in fuel use and more efficient use of engines at lower altitudes will bring about noticeable reductions in emissions, producing both local and global benefits. Airport officials, transportation planners and concerned citizens need to become aware of these new capabilities. Although full implementation of NextGen is probably 10-20 years away, the planning horizon for runway addition projects—especially if organized opposition to airport expansion is expected—is also likely to be one to two decades. Thus, planning for future expansion of runway capacity needs to begin taking into account what will be possible to do within 10-20 years that has not been possible up till now. In addition, everyone concerned about having adequate airport capacity in America’s urban areas should support the timely implementation of NextGen by the federal government and the aviation industry. R e a s o n F o u n d a t i o n Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1  Next Generation Tools for Greater Airport Capacity ................................................... 3  A. Air Traffic Control: An Overview ........................................................................................ 3  B. What the Future Can Look Like .......................................................................................... 5  C. Key NextGen Concepts ...................................................................................................... 6  D. Wake Turbulence Mitigation ........................................................................................... 15  Expanding Airport Capacity via NextGen .................................................................. 21  A. Capacity-Constrained Airports .......................................................................................... 21  Other Issues ............................................................................................................. 34  A. The Environment ............................................................................................................. 34  B. Super-Jumbo Jets .............................................................................................................. 35  C. International Considerations ............................................................................................. 35  D. Human Factors ................................................................................................................ 36  Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 38  About the Authors .................................................................................................... 39  Related Reason Publications ..................................................................................... 40  Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 41  Endnotes .................................................................................................................. 42 INCREASING AIRPORT CAPACITY 1 P a r t 1 Introduction Air travel in the United States is projected to increase by 64 percent between 2005 and 2020, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.1 One of the greatest constraints on that projected growth is airport capacity, especially the capacity of 35 large hub airports that the FAA identifies as capacity-constrained. Many of those airports are at or nearing the limits of their capacity, as recently described in the FAA’s Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System, 2007–20252. If those airports’ capacity is not expanded, continued growth in air travel demand will lead to ever-worsening congestion, and in some cases forms of rationing, such as the “slot” systems that have been used for decades at New York’s LaGuardia and Kennedy, Chicago’s O’Hare, and Washington, DC’s Reagan National. The easier problem to solve is “land-side” capacity—i.e., the size and serviceability of terminals (number of gates, size of boarding lounges, amount of parking, etc.). In most cases, there is room to expand terminal capacity, and funds are readily available via airport bond issues, supported by airport revenues such as passenger facility charges (PFCs), space rentals, etc. The far more difficult problem, in many cases, is expanding “air-side” capacity—the runways which make it possible for planes to take off and land. Runway capacity has several significant impacts on both traveler convenience and the economy. In any given city, a limit on capacity increases costs to travelers by reducing the number of flights and competitors that can serve that city. In addition, delays caused by capacity problems create passenger inconvenience, not merely at that particular city but also for other cities served by that aircraft. Thus, delays at hub airports can ripple through the system, causing inconvenience in distant cities for no locally apparent reason. In today’s U.S. market, a significant increase in short- haul travel by low-cost carriers and by regional jets to hub airports means that many aircraft fly as many as eight or 10 segments a day. If the first segment is delayed significantly, those delays carry on throughout the day. In many cases, increasing capacity by reducing delays at 10 key airports may reduce delays ultimately at 50 to 100 airports. Thus, one airport’s delays may be a national problem, not just a local one. In some communities, land has been available to add runways, and the community has been generally supportive of expansion (e.g., Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Washington Dulles). In other cases, however, bitter battles have been fought or are being fought over runway expansion. In St. Louis and Seattle, lengthy battles eventually resulted in new-runway projects going forward. By contrast, in San Francisco a multi-year battle over filling in part of San Francisco Bay to add 2 Reason Found ation runways to SFO ended with no new runways being developed, leaving SFO with a serious shortfall in airside capacity. As this is written, a battle over extending a parallel runway to full airliner length is under way in Fort Lauderdale. What if it were possible to increase an airport’s air-side capacity without having to expand the airport’s size? While this idea might sound fanciful, new technologies being developed for the FAA’s next-generation air traffic control system (NextGen) offer considerable promise. In some cases, these technologies should make much greater use of existing closely spaced parallel runways (like those at SFO) without compromising safety. In other cases, they might allow a new runway to be added much closer to existing runways than is possible under current standards, based on previous technology. And in nearly all cases, NextGen technology will make possible at least some increase in the safe, hourly throughput of every individual runway. These technologies will not eliminate the need for new runways that require expanding airport boundaries, but they should reduce the number of cases where this costly and difficult approach is needed. The FAA’s planned NextGen system represents a major step toward automation of routine aspects of air traffic control. It will safely reduce the separation between aircraft and permit more efficient routing of planes in our nation’s skies. While there will be much debate over the amounts of money to be spent and the method of funding, the recognition that a new approach is needed to manage the ever-increasing number of aircraft using the nation’s airspace and airports is a necessary step forward. It is important for mayors and other elected officials, airport authority board members, and the general public to understand what these technologies can do. They will give communities new options to reduce future airport construction costs and battles over airport expansion, without having to give up the economic benefits of meeting the demand for increased air travel. There are also realistic prospects for reducing the noise impact of airports on their neighbors. These benefits will be accompanied by savings for aircraft operators—on fuel use, crew time, and aircraft utilization. The reductions in fuel use, and more efficient use of engines at lower altitudes, will bring about noticeable reductions in emissions, producing both local and global benefits. The environmental benefits of these new technologies may well equal that of the reduced infrastructure requirements. These benefits can be implemented and achieve the results described in this review within the time period of the FAA’s planning horizon of 2025. However, the political will of both local and national leaders must be continually brought to bear on this issue. If the new technologies are not started in the near term and rigorously developed and implemented, then new pavement either at existing airports or totally new airports will be required to meet FAA forecasts. It is far cheaper for the aviation community to implement these new technologies than to build new infrastructure. This study will focus on how these new technologies can be applied to increase the runway capacity of existing airports, without having to expand the physical land area of those airports. INCREASING AIRPORT CAPACITY 3 P a r t 2 Next Generation Tools for Greater Airport Capacity A. Air Traffic Control: An Overview The purpose of air traffic control is to keep aircraft from running into each other—in technical terms, to provide safe separation between aircraft in all phases of operation (including on the ground). Before radar was used to keep planes safely separated, controllers on the ground used “procedural” separation methods (which are still used today over the oceans and over land in some parts of the world without radar): this means rules about how far apart planes must stay along a given flight path (in-trail separation) and between different altitudes (vertical separation). When planes and controllers can only approximately keep track of their latitude, longitude, and altitude, the rules call for huge separation margins to allow for large errors. The introduction of radar over the land area of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s made it possible to reduce lateral and in-trail spacing, since controllers were able to determine more accurately where each plane was. More recently (within the past few years), more precise altimeters have made it possible to reduce the vertical separation required at jets’ cruising altitudes, thereby increasing the number of “flight levels” for the en-route portion of flights. The increasing availability of GPS units on aircraft (airliners, corporate aircraft and light general aviation) means that pilots themselves have much more accurate information on where they are, though the current ATC system makes little use of this capability. Although the accuracy of information about where planes are has increased over the decades, the fundamental concept of ATC is still the manual model developed prior to World War II. Every significant action by a pilot must receive the permission of an air traffic controller on the ground, who watches a display of traffic and tells the pilot what to do when. (The pilot himself has no such display of other planes’ locations.) Even though a great deal of “intelligence” is built into most airliners’ flight management system (FMS) computers, pilots are not allowed to make use of it, unless and until the controller gives permission. And although controllers’ displays have for the most part been modernized, they have been given very few automation tools to predict conflicts or to manage large amounts of information in short periods of time. Thus, planes are still controlled largely “by hand.” Because of the understandable limits on how much information a controller can work with at one time and the speeds at which modern aircraft fly, the system must retain very 4 Reason Found ation large separation margins fore and aft, to the left and to the right, and above and below each plane to ensure safe operations. Currently air traffic at and near airports is controlled either by an air traffic controller seeing the plane from the control tower or viewing a radar display on a video screen, or by the pilot flying a prescribed approach on an instrument landing system (ILS) straight in to a runway. Each of these processes requires direct human involvement. In sequencing aircraft for arrival at the airport, an approach controller looking at a radar display accepts an aircraft approaching the airport from another controller that has handled the aircraft as it descends from its en-route altitude. The approach controller then looks at all of the other aircraft that are arriving in the same time frame that are already on his display. He gives turn and descent instructions to each plane to get them in sequence for lining up for the runway, spaced the required distance apart. In many cases, this requires multiple turns of the aircraft and speeding up and slowing down various planes to maintain the correct spacing. The information on each plane’s position is updated only every 4.8 seconds, each time the radar mechanically sweeps the sky. There is also a lag time between the controller’s instruction and the pilot’s action, depending on the reaction time of each pilot. To avoid errors in placing aircraft too close behind one another (which could cause problems with wake turbulence), the controller will add to the spacing, just to be safe. The result of all this work effort is an inefficient flow of aircraft with planes spaced farther apart than necessary if the controller had perfect information, thereby reducing the number of aircraft that can reach the runway each hour. There are similar problems with departing aircraft, as well as coordinating between arriving and departing aircraft on the same runway. The resulting mix is like an orchestra conductor conducting a group of musicians who can’t hear or see each other. This “by-hand” process can be replaced with procedures based on new technologies. Many of the individual components and systems have already been developed and tested, though they have not been integrated into a replacement for the current manual approach. These systems can provide precise aircraft routing without human intervention, area-wide and cockpit-to-cockpit real-time knowledge of the position of each aircraft, and more accurate separation management to mitigate wake turbulence. With such a system, aircraft can land and take off with considerably less spacing than required today, thereby maximizing the capacity of each runway. The Next-Generation (NextGen) technologies to be presented in the following pages are being researched and developed by a federal government organization called the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO). Legislatively created in 2003, this body is made up of the FAA, NASA, the Departments of Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The group is chaired by the Secretary of Transportation and has working groups made up of industry specialists. The JPDO is tasked with developing the various components of the NextGen air traffic control system. Its planning systems are coordinated to have a completely working system available for industry to build and install. These components include weather, networking, satellites, and