IAF Assignment Optimization for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic people living close to the airport got accustomed to less flights, and therefore less noise disturbance. Now the amount of traffic is increasing again and so is the noise disturbance. For this research specifically the optimizing task of distributing of arriving aircraft over the IAF is addressed, as often the shortest transition routes from an IAF towards the runway go over densely populated areas, but flying via another IAF results in longer flying times and thus more CO2 emissions. A tool that is able to quantitatively make a trade-off between noise and emission is required to provide a basis for the distribution of aircraft over the IAF. In this research the feasibility and effects of using an expanded version of the aircraft landing problem to create the IAF Selection Optimization tool is studied, including the effects of different settings for the tool. As a case study Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is used, as it is a busy airport that lies close (11km) to the city center of Amsterdam. In this paper first the methodology of the IAF Selection Optimization tool is explained, and afterwards the working of the tool is discussed by running various scenarios for three different days from 2019 at AAS. For all scenarios an optimal and feasible solution was found by the tool, based on the input variables selected for each scenario. It could therefore be concluded that the IAF Selection Optimization tool provides a means to optimally distribute aircraft based over the IAF based on a quantitative trade-off.