At Think, we are finding ways to help airports prepare for the future by providing tools and services to provide insight and facilitate growth. With airports seeking to return to existing traffic levels, but in a more environmentally friendly manner, as well as to make best use of available capacity without funding runway expansion, there is a need to deploy new ATC capacity enhancement techniques.  Beyond simple tweaks to runway infrastructure, more significant changes are needed such as Time-Based Separations (TBS) on final approach, wake vortex RECAT for arrivals and departures, as well as various forms of bespoke arrival and departure spacing measures.  But how can airports commit to investing in new ATC equipment, procedures and training without understanding and comparing the benefits of each (or all) of these techniques?

That is where Think can help.  We recognised that many existing software modelling tools do not support these new capabilities, and those that do are expensive and time consuming to procure and use.  As a result, we developed our own airport capacity optimisation tool RAPID.RAPID allows for fast and reliable forecasts of the benefits that various ATC capacity enhancement concepts and technologies can bring, without committing the time, cost, and resource associated with building a traditional Fast Time Simulation (FTS).

 RAPID allows us to quickly assess options to optimise an airport’s capacity by simulating its performance in custom scenarios, where parameters are first adjusted to accurately reflect your airport’s current operation, then a selection of capacity enablers can be applied to observe their effects. We use a statistical and data-centric approach, developed through integrating all our previous experience in capacity modelling.  This allows us to quickly produce tailored, visually rich results on a wide range of performance indicators, all of which is output in a report ready format so we can easily identify capacity constraints and assess the benefits of new enablers.

We are dedicated to tailoring our bespoke solutions to suit your airport’s specific operational needs, which is why we continue to create new features and improve RAPID to be more flexible, more informative and easier to use.  In 2021, we are modernising the user interface, significantly reducing data requirements and allowing for greater customisation of custom scenarios.

For airports looking to implement ATM improvements, RAPID provides an indispensable source of information to help you choose the best steps to take.