How to Avoid Aircraft Delays
Over at WWVB there’s been a regular series of posts about aircraft delays and their causes. (Hint: the delays aren’t caused by air traffic control or FAA ineptness.) In one post, he mentions that a good rate for runway use is 60 takeoffs or landings per runway per hour in perfect weather and either 50 or 40/hour in poorer weather. Get The Flick also has been trying to push rational thought in connection with airline operations too.
But if that’s all true then why is it at the EAA Airventure show in Oshkosh WI every year they land about 150 per hour per runway? Doesn’t that put the lie to that 60/operations/hour/runway number? Wired has a nicely written article about the Oshkosh operations that’s mostly accurate (they don’t actually split the runway lengthwise). Wired’s made a name for themselves in largely accurate technical writing, unlike many media outlets.
There’s a couple tricks to getting this capacity at Oshkosh. First, many, although not all, aircraft flying into Oshkosh are smaller general aviation aircraft and need less separation than large airliners. Thus, the FAA has a reduced separation rule, for this event only, where airplanes follow each other at 1/2 mile distances. This is much closer than normal. There are also special communications methods, and special procedures
But there’s some tricks too. First, one taxiway has been converted to a runway for the week of the 
event. Second, they actually land two aircraft on the same runway at the same time. Pilots are instructed to land on a colored dot on the runway. The two colored dots are separated by 1500 feet. They’ve doubled the number of runways by using a taxiway, and doubled the capacity of runways by landing or taking off two at a time. Ground personnel expedite aircraft off the runway rapidly too, again through special procedures (signs in the cockpit windows).
The 3000 aircraft operations (landings or take offs) over ten hours during the event is 300/hour. But with two runways that’s 150/hour/runway. And with the dots doubling each runway, that’s about 38/hour/runway/dot. Some operations will take the whole runway (landing the A380), or require more runway for takeoff so that quick calculation isn’t completely accurate.
Even adjusting for the operations requiring the whole runway, that’s well within the 40-60 operations per hour seen at all the other airports. The takeaway lesson is that capacity is directly tied to runways, and only loosely and indirectly connected to air traffic control.