Capacity estimation for super-dense operations

In this paper, we investigate methods of estimating capacity for Super-Dense Operations (SDO) in the terminal area of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). We model the transition airspace, from roughly 200 nmi away from the airport, where most aircraft are en route and beginning their top of descent, to approximately 40 nmi from the airport, where traffic transitions into the terminal airspace. We consider capacity estimation both for short-term deterministic weather forecasts and for long-term probabilistic forecasts. For short-term deterministic forecasts, we are able to analyze one forecast to estimate the capacity for arrival aircraft (or departure aircraft) that all have a constant Required Navigation Performance (RNP) or that have a mixture of different RNP values. For long-term probabilistic forecasts given in the form of ensemble weather forecasts, we compute the probability distribution of the capacity.