Observation and Analysis of Departure Planning Operations at Boston Logan International Airport

The Departure Planner (DP) is a concept for a decision-aiding tool that is aimed at improving the departure operations performance at major congested airports. In order to support the development of the DP tool, the flow constraints and their causalities in the departure process – primarily responsible for generating inefficiencies and delays- need to be identified. This thesis is and effort to identify such flow constraints and gain a deep understanding of the underlying dynamics of the departure process based on field observations and data analysis at Boston Logan International Airport. It was observed that the departure process is a complex interactive queuing system, where aircraft queues from as a manifestation of the flow constraints. While departure delays were observed in all airport components (runways, taxiways, ramps and gates), it was concluded that the flow constraints manifest mainly at he runway system, which exhibits the largest delays and queues…National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Cente