MIT Study Shows Benefits of Surface Departure Metering at JFK

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has released a detailed study on the fuel and carbon reduction benefits of surface departure metering at JFK International Airport.

According to a release, the departure metering program at JFK is a collaboration among the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration, the airlines operating at JFK, and Passur Aerospace, under the overall leadership of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Officials noted that the study compared taxi out times, fuel burn, and emissions before and after the implementation of the metering program, based on data gathered over six months of operation of the departure metering program at JFK, which was compared to twelve months of operational data before the program was implemented.

The study found that there could be an estimated $10MM-$15MM of annual savings across all the carriers involved in the metering program.

Additionally, 5 million fewer gallons of fuel could be burned per year, resulting in a reduction of 48,000 metric tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere per year. Also, there could be 14,800 fewer total departure taxi hours per year, resulting from flights that remain at the gate with passengers in the departure lounge followed by a lower active taxi time when they are released, rather than joining an extended active taxi queue.

The proprietary program uses a combination of software, process management, and a manned operations center staffed by a Passur professional services Team to create a "virtual departure queue" in which departures are "metered" by holding flights either at the gate or in a common metering area, rather than queuing in an extended line of aircraft with engines on.

The study was conducted by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory and MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. These researchers are undertaking benefits assessment of surface congestion management systems at a number of airports in the U.S. in support of the Tower Flight Data Manager system being prototyped at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory to help meet the the Federal Aviation Administration's Next Generation Air Transportation System objectives.

Passur Aerospace is a business intelligence company, which provides predictive analytics built on proprietary algorithms and on the concurrent integration and simultaneous mining of multiple databases.

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