The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) expects air traffic volume and complexity to continue to increase, and with it the demand for air traffic control (ATC) services.
Applications and Benefits of RNP Approaches in the United States National Airspace System
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Some of the busiest airports in the NAS set the pace for the entire system. These busy airports experience frequent delays, cancellations and other inefficiencies, and many of these effects tend to propagate regionally or nationally. At many airports, opportunities exist to mitigate these effects, by improving parallel runway operations, converging runway operations, adjacent airport operations, and single runway access. Through the application of low RNP values and approach and missed-approach paths that are not straight in and straight out, these opportunities for improvement are enabled. Because these RNP approach features apply to certain operators and not to others, their application is limited to those locations where aircraft capabilities exist and where benefits can be realized. These procedures are being developed as special aircraft and aircrew authorization required (SAAAR) as a core OEP activity. Our paper will describe the applications of RNP SAAAR at these busy airports, and at a handful of airports where safety/risk mitigation needs can be addressed as well. Our paper will describe a benefits-driven prioritization scheme for implementation of public RNP SAAAR procedures, with details on certain sites and projects. The analysis and modeling for this work was performed by MITRE/CAASD and coordinated through a designated Working Group chaired by Dr. Hassan Shahidi under the Performance-based operations Aviation Rulemaking Committee.