Estimates of capacity and delay for proposed runway systems : Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, final report

Abstract

1. The addition of the fifth runway at Schiphol increases the airport hourly capacity for landings by almost 100%, and the capacity for takeoffs by more than 40%. 2. The current runway system will provide good levels of service (average delays less than 4 minutes, % aircraft delayed more than 20 minutes less than 2%) until aircraft traffic reaches a level of approximately 200,000 annual operations. The current level of annual operations is 130,000. 3. The addition of the fifth runway creates a runway system which provides good levels of service until the annual traffic reaches a level of approximately 270,000 annual operations, or more than double the current level. 4. With the addition of the fifth runway, the center runway (which presently has noise problems) would not be used at current levels of traffic. If it is used only at peak times, the percentage of annual operations on this runway remains very small until an annual level of over 200,000 operations is reached. 5. The crossing problem (caused by aircraft which use the fifth runway having to cross the center runway) is not severe, and has been successfully handled at busy U.S. airports. At peak times when all three runways are used, the average wait for a crossing is less than 1 minute with the average number of waiting aircraft less than one half. The maximum number of aircraft waiting to cross ever observed will be less than four during the peaks of these busy periods.