Optimal TRACON Descent Procedures under Wind Uncertainty and Fuel Savings Factors

Abstract

A terminal-area descent procedure need to perform across the wind climatology rather than a single wind condition. Although flight demonstrations of the delayed deceleration approach (DDA) showed substantial fuel savings, DDA combined late deceleration with a steeper $3.77^\circ$ final descent, obscuring the contribution of each design choice. In this work, we propose the continuous-descent delayed deceleration approach (CDDA), which applies delayed deceleration to a continuous descent approach (CDA) profile without a level segment before glideslope intercept. A simulation-based stochastic optimization selects flap deployment trigger speeds and glideslope-capture distance to minimize expected fuel under wind uncertainty subject to a given stabilized-approach probability. An optimal control reduction limits the design space to a few hundred candidates, enabling exact expectation over a weighted wind grid using six-degree-of-freedom fast-time simulations. CDA and CDDA are optimized at matched final angles of $3.00^\circ$, $3.50^\circ$, and $3.77^\circ$ for the A319, B737-800, B767-400, and A340-300. Results show that deceleration architecture is the weakest factor, yielding 0.3--3.9\% savings at $3.50^\circ$ and becoming material only for the B767-400 at $3.77^\circ$. Glideslope angle dominates fuel saving. At the $3.50^\circ$ Category D design maximum, optimized CDDA reduces expected fuel by 11-21\% relative to optimized $3^\circ$ CDA, while flap-schedule optimization adds 2-17\%. The DDA level segment acts primarily as a tailwind-robustness buffer, and the $3.77^\circ$ final exceeds the 1,000 ft/min stabilized-approach sink-rate element, limiting its near-term operational applicability.