From Air Transport System 2050 Vision to Planning for ... - Onera

AIRPORT
Within this timeframe, several scenarios could be envisaged:
• Commercial aircraft to or from hubs. Passengers would access airports using the intermodal transport system
• Personal transport systems to or from secondary dedicated airports connected with the home by air-rail transportation
• Hub and secondary airports connected, enabling passengers using personal aircraft to reach the hub and transfer to commercial aircraft.
Information Handling and Collaborative Decision Making
An integral element of the airport of the future is the handling of information and the collaboration of all involved stakeholders. Total Airport Management
(TAM) will be expanded, the role of operators changing from tactical to pre-tactical and from specialized controlling functions to multi-system management.
Coordination of the overall network system at airports and between airports will be necessary. Decision-making will be supported by high-performance automated
systems operating on an enormous amount of data providing statistical analyses, overview of the actual situation and prediction of the future. With
the automation of more and more processes, the amount of data that needs to be handled will increase significantly. New structures and concepts of data
handling will therefore need to be developed.
Airside operations
In the short term, the airside will take advantage of improvements resulting from the SES programme and will evolve towards higher automation. The airport
infrastructure will include revolutionary architecture adapted to any new aircraft configuration and propulsion mode (i.e blended wing body and new fuels,
such as hydrogen or biofuels).
New airport layouts and runway configurations could overcome weather restrictions and maintain capacity. A revolutionary airside development could be a
circular runway, adapted to any wind direction, to increase capacity. Associated to a terminal centered in the ‘circle’, such runways would enable short, fuelsaving
taxiing along radii adapted for capacity and safety.
Runways
Capacity
Real or actual capacity is usually lower than declared capacity because of weather restrictions and dependencies between runways. Current trends in airport
runway operations will optimise the use of the existing runway system through:
• Improved planning resulting from SESAR trajectory-based operations
• Increased use of noise abatement operations
• Capacity increases from better understanding of wake-vortices, enabling reduced separation and new approach procedures
Location and size of runways
Revolutionary concepts to save space and/or to enable operations to alleviate pressure on inhabitants include:
• Remote runways, possibly in the sea
• Large runway surfaces, enabling operations from any direction
• Large circular runways enabling operations from any direction
• Double-deck runways
• Airports in the sky (cruiser – feeder concept)
Operational procedures
Revolutionary concepts to enable more efficient runway usage include:
• Formation flying or paired arrivals on one or several runways
• More entrance and exit points to one runway
• High-precision approach systems to allow reduced separation through
flying different approach paths towards one runway
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