This work constitutes a basic study of aircraft access to the terminal area queue. It has grown out of the increasing concern in developing methods to increase airport runway. acceptance rate to alleviate the problem of airspace bottleneck.

Considering mainly airline traffic in principal passenger transport, a method is presented to specify the relationship between the total waiting time, on one hand, and the number of gate positions and aircraft parking spaces on the other. This relationship enables one to derive a feasible configuration of terminal gate facilities under various saturation levels. An attempt is then made to characterize an environment under which a proposed flow strategy will be implementable.