Wide-body aircraft demand potential at metropolitan Washington airports

Abstract

Introduction: At present there is concern regarding the feasibility and future impact of allowing service by wide-body aircraft into National Airport in Washington. Some of the important issues are: (i) To what extent would the air carrier traffic change at Dulles and National Airports if wide-bodies were allowed at National? In addition, would this reduction in the quality of service (i.e. trip convenience and time) result in diversion of passengers to other modes of transportation in short-range markets? (ii) Could airlines maintain a high level of service to Metropolitan Washington and still make a profit serving their Washington markets? (iii) What would be the effect of changing the existing quota of 40 operations per hour at National Airport? FA-7, an air transportation simulation model developed in the Flight Transportation Laboratory at M.I.T. is well suited for analysis of these policy-oriented questions and was used to obtain answers to a series of hypothetical scenarios regarding wide-body aircraft use at the two Metropolitan Washington airports..