Analysis of Criteria for Closely-Spaced Parallel Runway Approaches: Influences and Capacity Constraints in a Multiple Airport System

In order to increase arrival rates at many of today's heavily congested airports, simultaneous approaches, whenever possible, are conducted on parallel runways. For many years, the FAA has permitted simultaneous independent instrument approach operations only on parallel runways with a minimum separation of 4300 ft. Nowadays, new procedures have been developed to increase the utilization on closely-spaced runways, PRM/SOIA (Precision Runway Monitor/Simultaneous Offset Instrument Approach), one of the most recent of such procedures, allows simultaneous approaches in systems of runways spaced as close as 750 ft. Fraga et al. (2010) [6] using computer simulation showed the potential application of PRM/SOIA at Sao Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport (GRU) evaluating its impact on the airport runway hourly capacity. The present paper considering GRU as part of the airport system of TMA-SP (São Paulo Terminal Airspace) focuses on the influence of PRM/SOIA implementation at GRU on the system of main airports in the terminal airspace. Evidences were found that TMA-SP current overlapping approach procedures generate interferences on the operations of the airports in the system reducing the overall runway hourly capacity of the airports. In order to quantify this interference simulation was used to evaluate and to compare the airport system runway hourly capacity as opposed to the individual airport runway hourly capacity added up. It was found that TMA-SP airport system runway hourly capacity is about 30% less than the estimated overall runway hourly capacity of the airports alone.