The integration of the Point Merge approach procedure into the flexiGuide airspace structure

Abstract

Current operations in the terminal manoeuvring area (TMA) are a bottleneck for the local air traffic system and hence may limit its efficiency. Under today’s circumstances, the operation of a TMA is optimised for high traffic throughput. However, in many cases this optimization is detrimental to the environment with regard to noise and fuel emissions. Continuous descent operations (CDO) have shown to be able to abate a significant part of these emissions, however prove to be incompatible with a high traffic flow rate through the TMA. It is hence today required to trade the two requirements off against each other. The DLR has developed a traffic management concept for the TMA which allows aircraft equipped with advanced fourdimensional flight management systems (A-FMS) to save route length and fuel while approaching larger airports. Aircraft not equipped with these A-FMS will be guided in path stretching areas like today and do not really benefit from this newly designed TMA. This paper presents variants of reconfiguring the route structure for Point Merge approaches so that all aircraft, whether A-FMS equipped or not, are allowed to fly nearly unimpeded continuous descent approaches (CDA) even under high traffic loads.