Evaluating Operational Benefits of the Arrival Management System based on Radar Tracks: A Case Study in a Chinese Airport

The Arrival Management (AMAN) system, a decision support tool for air traffic controllers, could provide a sequencing and metering capability, support runway allocation, and offer automated assistance. The problem of AMAN has attracted considerable attention from aviation researchers; in addition, several applications have been implemented around the world. However, there are few studies about evaluating benefits from AMAN; previous related works are conducted through modeling, simulation, or expert surveys. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to discover the operational benefits of AMAN by actual data. Firstly, the active and passive periods with or without AMAN are defined, forming data samples with high similarity for the experiment. Secondly, five Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are established from a joint study of the KPI systems recommended by ICAO, FAA, and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization. Finally, evaluation for AMAN benefits is implemented based on large-scale radar tracks data in a Chinese airport. The result presents a significant and comprehensive improvement in arrival operation with AMAN