Sector Traffic Balancing Using Tactical Demand Tailoring

The aeronautical traffic capacity is approaching its limits. This is especially true for airports where airports are constrained to resources such as runways. Consequences of full capacity traffic can be translated to delays and safety issues such as higher collisions risks. One important part of traffic are points where traffic is routed, such as transfer of flights to different ANSPs, sector changes, and merging to meter fixes for landing. There are cases where some entry points to sections are close to maximum capacity, while other entry points to the same section have more capacity. Within the framework of FF-ICE, this paper presents the operational idea of Tactical Demand Tailoring, which consists of balancing traffic by re-routing traffic hours before the arrival of aircraft to a given congested section. This paper proposes the conditions that must be met for TDT to be operationally feasible, and it discusses the potential benefits to increase capacity at overloaded parts of the airspace. Results showed that flights exist under the current flight conditions that can be re-routed to increase capacity. On average, these re-routes result in an approximate 1.9% increase in flight track length. Furthermore, a real-world case study conducted at the Terminal Manoeuvring Area of Schiphol Airport demonstrates that the implementation of Tactical Demand Tailoring effectively mitigates delays.