Data-Driven Analysis of Final Separation Between Successive Landing Aircraft

In recent years, with the development of air traffic in China, airspace resources cannot keep up with the growth of traffic demand. Therefore, enhancement of runway capacity by reducing wake turbulence separation has become a research hotspot in the air traffic management field. As there are gaps between theory and practice, many scholars are doing practical operation-based evaluations, focusing on the final separations (intervals) between two successive aircraft. However, few studies have considered the impact of different controllers and the evolution of separations over time. This paper is dedicated to analyzing the final separations between leading and trailing aircraft based on the aircraft trajectories. This study carries out the final separation analysis from static and dynamic perspectives, considering the final separations under different traffic pressures, by different controllers, and in the different segregated and mixed operations. Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (ZGGG) is taken as an experimental case. The results indicate that the final separation buffer decreases over time. Moreover, under the same high traffic pressures, the final separations could be used to compare the effectiveness of different controllers.