How Heathrow Airport Is Using Wind to Cut Flight Delays
Addtime：2015-05-18 10:27
Wind is the biggest single cause of delay at Heathrow, affecting traffic on about 65 days a year. Aircraft approaching airportsare separated by distance, but when a jet flies into a headwind, it will take longer for it to complete that distance - leading to delays.
Now Nats, the British air traffic control organisation, and Lockheed Martin have found a way of separating aeroplanes by time, rather than distance, which means that Heathrow will be able to maintain the landing rate and save 800,000 delay minutes a year.
On windy days Heathrow loses about eight aircraft movements an hour, which can have a significant knock-on effect. But the new system basically moves the aircraft closer to each other.
An airplane that would have been approaching Heathrow under normal conditions can fly closer to the aircraft in front safely when it is windy because it will take longer to complete the distance.
The new system, developed after years of research, was introduced at Heathrow this spring and appears to be working well.
With air passenger figures expected to double in the next 20 years, it is not just Heathrow that has capacity problems.
Technology can help with air traffic control, and it also has its uses at ground level.
Lockheed Martin, which has 88 airport clients around the world, has been developing queue control techniques, using video analytics and Wi-Fi triangulation.
Lockheed can anonymously track mobile phones to locate passengers and give early warning of increased crowds. The data can be used to increase security or check in staff quickly and historic data can be mined to forecast predicted movements of people, so that appropriate staffing levels can be planned ahead. This is particularly early in that flight schedules have a lot of variability built in - 99 percent arrive either up to 15 minutes early or 15 minutes late.
Another time-saving example used by Qantas in Australia is permanent built-in baggage tags. These use RDIF technology to streamline the bag-drop process.
Martin Bowman, global airports director at Lockheed, says:"We work on the basis of making marginal gains. We aren't going to find huge leaps forward, but small improvements can make a significant difference to relieving overcrowding and delays."
By Angela Jameson, The National | Apr. 27, 2015