Alumni

According to Eurocontrol,  in 2017 Schiphol Airport was the airport with the biggest inbound ATFM delay of all major airports in Europe. One of the reasons that could cause the inbound ATFM delay is the so called ‘bunching’ effect at the border of the Dutch airspace. The objective of this research is to determine if the encountered planned bunches at -3-hour planning phase has an impact on the airport slot planning. This research focusses on the airport slot declaration and the planned demand based on the last filed flight plans, covering a period from the 25th of October 2017 till the 27th of October 2018. The analysis  contains 254,000 arriving flights in both winter and summer season. The analysis determines to which extent the bunching occurs in the airport slot declaration, and at the border of the Dutch airspace. The results reveal that bunching are present in the pre-planning phase within the airport slot declaration and is caused by the skewness within the airport slot-brackets. The analyses render similar patterns in which overdemand occurs within the time-brackets. The subsequent relationship between the airport slot planning and air traffic demand is around 48%, within the assumptions and limitations of the research. This means that 48% of the flights which are planned in a period with overdemand within the airport slot allocation, also tend to arrive in a period with overdemand at the border of the the Dutch airspace.

Graduated: June 2019

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is the airport with the most airport Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delay in Europe in 2017. One of the causes of the ATFM delay is that airlines do not adhere to their allocated airport slots. With providing insights into deviation between flight schedules or flight plan and airport slot, causes of deviating to the airport slot are identified. This research is done by means of analysing the deviations to identify the characteristics of the deviations. In addition, interviews with airlines and a ground handler and literature about possible causes are used to provide insights. The main findings are that ~ 3.3% of the flight schedules deviate from the airport slot. The deviation between flight plan and airport slot is around 67% of arriving flights. This deviation of flight plans means that the estimated in block time (EIBT), deviates more than 5 minutes from the airport slot. Both in absolute amount and relative percentage, general aviation and cargo airlines are the business models that cause the most deviation between flight schedule and airport slot. An agreement between the general aviation ground handlers and the typical business of cargo are the main reasons for the deviation. The full-service carriers and low-cost carriers cause in absolute number, the most deviation between the EIBT based on flight plan and airport slots. If the EIBT, based on the flight plan, is earlier than the airport slot, more than 90% of these arrivals are planned earlier because of schedule buffers.

Graduated: June 2019

On final approach, an Approach (APP) Air Traffic Controller (ATCo) is responsible for keeping sufficient separation between aircraft lining up on the ILS. The current industry standard is to separate these aircraft with a minimum distance, called Distance-Based Separation or DBS. European regulation requires all European airports to implement separation based on time (TBS) before 2024. Due to this implementation, effectively changing the APP ATC task from a geometrical to a time-based problem, and because of further complications such as the European Re-categorisation of aircraft types, experts fear that the theoretical gains attainable by using TBS will not be fully realised. In this research, a display tool concept to aid APP ATCos in realising the full potential of TBS, the Ideal Turn-In Point (ITIP) display is designed and evaluated with respect to the current state of the art. The ITIP display assists controllers in selecting optimal approach strategies starting from the moment aircraft enter the Terminal Control Area. The display aims to assist the operator by showing the possibilities and restrictions in the system rather than giving (restricting) advisories. In an initial proof-of-concept experiment, comparing the ITIP display to the current industry state of the art display, promising results were found; the ITIP display was shown to maintain safety and increase efficiency, whilst maintaining controller workload. The current industry state of the art display is a tool designed by the National Air Traffic Services, currently operational at London Heathrow Airport.

Graduated: June 2019

Key to enabling growth at Schiphol without compromising on safety, efficiency and the environment is to increase the predictability of traffic flows. Procedures put in place by Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) support predictable traffic flows not only at Schiphol but also in the surrounding airspace of Central Europe…Research is carried out into the effectiveness of CDM since the data -connection and the impact on operational partners at Schiphol and in the EUROCONTROL  network. The data-connection is identified to have improved the accuracy of take-off time predictions at Schiphol considerably with an average monthly increase of 6% of all departing movements regarded as having a predictable take-off time. Towards the network this take-off time predictability has increased significantly. In relation to similar major-hub airports, the increased take-off time predictability and the exchange of more accurate operational planning data between Schiphol and the NMOC are identified to have contributed to the significantly high compliance to imposed take-off times (93% of all departing movements) supporting stable Network Management. Although significant increases in delay throughout the EUROCONTROL network are increasingly affecting a stable planning of aircraft parking stands at Schiphol, indications for a reduction in stand-delay and other KPIs related to improved flow-efficiency at the airport are identified.

Graduated: April 2019

The determination of the capacity of the Lelystad Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA) is complex and brings different challenges. The opening of Lelystad airport for civil air traffic is the motivation to perform research into the capacity of the Lelystad TMA…The aim of this research is to help CLSK to determine the capacity factors and the capacity of the Lelystad TMA…By means of interviews and expert sessions with operational experts of CLSK, data is created to use during the research. With the data, the volume and capacity of the TMA is calculated. After this, a bottleneck analysis is conducted for the capacity of the handling process. The bottleneck in the handling process is the airport with its aircraft stands. After this, the TMA is the limiting capacity compared with the runway. Additionally, the annual maximum flight movements of 4,000 and 10,000 is feasible with the structure of the TMA. When the airport becomes operational for commercial traffic, the established capacity must be validated

Graduated: February 2019

The objective of this research is to analyse the effects of the current hand-over conditions on both horizontal and vertical flight trajectory efficiency. This analysis provides insight into the significance of how the current hand-over conditions affect operational efficiency. It will present an understanding of the impact on air traffic controller (ATCo) workload when this additional coordination is carried out. Besides analysing the impact on operational efficiency and ATCo workload, the research will provide possible solutions to the problem at hand. Solutions could range from procedural changes to technical innovations which will not negatively impact/increase controller workload.

Graduated: July 2018

Large-scale (e.g. Tour de France, Nuclear Security Summit, etc) or other special events can mean a temporary  increase in (concentrated) traffic in the airspace. These interruptions of normal operations can have impact on the airspace capacity and air traffic controller workload. The objectives of the research is to analyse and evaluate the impact of past events, to provide insight in the capacity impact of an event. To do so, operational requirements of different events are evaluated and analysed, with the aim to provide possible improvements to be better prepared for future events. Improvement could include procedural recommendations to manage special events in the airspace, to ensure that capacity is managed in efficient ways in the future. How do current procedures, to determine the impact of special events on airspace capacity, justify the impact on operations to stakeholders in Dutch airspace?

Graduated: July 2018

The airside infrastructure layout of AAS is very complicated, and bottlenecks are easily formed. With this growing amount of movements, bottlenecks will occur more often and influence the capacity. Every stakeholder has its own perspective on the current problems and cooperation is difficult to achieve. The research gives an overview of the current bottlenecks at the runways, taxiways and gate/buffer areas to create more awareness of the seriousness of the problem. More awareness will stimulate a better cooperation between the main stakeholders of AAS’ airside infrastructure. Also, a list of possible solutions is created.

Graduated: July 2018

How do airline characteristics, ranging from business model differences to variation in actual procedures, affect AAS airside capacity? Schiphol airport is reaching its limit based on the cap of 500.000 movements per year. For reaching this amount of movements a lot of capacity constraints have already been tackled, not all of them however. There are numerous airlines operating at Schiphol, and all of these airlines have various differences and equalities ranging from differences between business models to differences between pilots. The fleet size or structure of an airline for example can impact the maximum number of movements per hour of a runway as bigger aircraft need to have more separation than smaller aircraft. Another issue is the communication between airlines and airport. This may lead to congestion as the airport wouldn’t be able to plan the gate capacity well in advance. When the impacts of airline strategies are known in more detail, AAS and LVNL would be able to plan accordingly to have less capacity congestion.

Graduated: July 2018

AAS is at the final stage of having Airport- collaborative decision making (A-CDM) completely implemented. The last step is to connect the network manager and then AAS will be a CDM airport. The network manager is currently not yet connected and, therefore, not taken into account in this study since there is not any data available yet. Local A-CDM is currently implemented at AAS which includes the four other main stakeholders (Airport operator, Aircraft operator, ATC and ground handlers). Local A-CDM should improve the stakeholders’ operational efficiency by improving the predictability and decision making.  It is likely that A-CDM has been beneficial for the operation of each involved stakeholder at AAS. However, for all stakeholders it is still uncertain how much the operational efficiency has improved thanks to the implementation of local A-CDM. The aim of this study is researching how local A-CDM has exactly improved the operation’s efficiency for each involved A-CDM stakeholder at Mainport Schiphol until now, and what the exact benefits are.

Graduated: July 2018