Sensis to design NextGen airspace procedures for high density airport terminal areas

Posted by John McHale
EAST SYRACUSE, N.Y., 7 Feb. 2011. NASA selected Sensis Corp. for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Super Density Operations Airspace Design (SDOAD) project. Sensis will develop airspace definitions, including procedures and routes, which will enable NASA to more effectively and accurately research Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) concepts to increase capacity at high volume, complex airports, and surrounding airspaces.
As part of its NextGen initiative, NASA is examining a number of new operational concepts aimed at addressing current and future capacity challenges at major U.S. airports. In order to best test and evaluate these concepts, airspace definitions, including operational procedures and routes, must be developed.
Sensis will be modeling the arrival and departure traffic routes for six major Southern California metroplex airports including Los Angeles International (LAX), Burbank (BUR), Ontario (ONT), Long Beach (LGB), Santa Ana (SNA), and San Diego (SAN). The project will entail characterization of traffic flow route and altitude ranges; analysis, modeling and design of continuous descent and standard arrival procedures as well as future departure procedures; and trajectory based evaluation of the modeled procedures. NASA will use the definitions to accurately test new concepts, including automated arrival concepts.
"Current U.S. airport capacity is far less than the forecasted demand. One of the goals of NextGen is to develop new procedures that will unlock capacity by increasing operational efficiencies," says Ken Kaminski, vice president and general manager, Sensis Air Traffic Systems. "This project looks at a complex high traffic metroplex to identify the individual operational characteristics that need to be taken into account to accurately test NextGen capacity improvement concepts before the concepts are further matured."