Improving aircraft approach operations taking into account noise and fuel consumption

While air transport brings very significant economic and social benefits to the cities and regions served by airports, aircraft noise is the single major cause of community opposition to airport operations, becoming a critical issue that affects the sustainability of future traffic growth. However, planning operations exclusively focusing on noise impact may result in an increase of fuel consumption or delays. This paper develops a suitable bi-objective model for landing aircraft, which finds a schedule that minimises noise impact, total fuel consumption and delays, under wake vortex separation and Constrained Position Shifting restrictions. The results of this model are compared with real operations in a major European airport to assess the potential level of improvements. By comparing with real data from Madrid-Barajas airport, the research shows potential improvements of up to 4.5% reduction of total fuel consumption (without increasing noise levels) only by modifying the sequence of arrivals, and up to 43% (without extra fuel consumption) of reduction in noise impact over the populations under study.