

Under the umbrella of SESARs Atlantic Interoperability initiative to Reduce Emissions II (AIRE II) program, NLR, LVNL and KLM have teamed up to develop a novel arrival management system to improve nightly operations at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol using time-based operations. At night, aircraft often tend to arrive in bunches at the Amsterdam FIR, resulting in sequencing (e.g. vectoring) before TMA entrance. This disturbs their CDA and leads to inefficiency. This is not necessary as modern flight management systems are able to accurately predict their time of arrival. In addition many aircraft are able to share this information with the ground using data link. In this project, the partners have created a ground based planning system that interfaces with most aircraft via data-link. Aircraft down-link their ETA-threshold. These form the basis for an optimized planning that is aimed at preventing bunching in the FIR. To realize the planning, flight crews are requested to use their RTA functionality. The system has been tested in a live-trial for four consecutive nights. Bunching is significantly reduced and the amount of top-of-descent CDAs that can be flown is subsequently increased, resulting in less fuel burn and emissions.