Originally Posted by
kcockayne
On the face of it, this is the same sort of nonsense as the “tunnels in the sky” fiasco some years back. From what I read about this idea, it is designed to reduce delays & extended routing. But, the problem that causes these to happen is the excessive number of a/c which wish to operate into certain “congested airports” . That is, there are too many a/c wishing to operate into these airports because the runway capacity is less than the demand. You can fly extended routes on the approach or you can hold the excess in stacks, but unless you have the runway capacity you can never reduce the delays or avoid extended routings. The only other possible method of avoiding this would be to have strict control of departure times, en route times , & to ensure that every a/c flew the optimum track, without exception so that they all arrived at specified times with the appropriate distances between them at destination. Of course, this would require strict application of departure slots - resulting in delays ; & this would be impossible to implement on a workable basis because you could not allow for the actual traffic pattern at the departure airport which would be required in order for you to apply the timed departures which would be required.
A bit like what ACDM is trying to do then?