An evaluation of departure throughputs before and after the implementation of wake vortex recategorization at Atlanta Hartsfield/Jackson International Airport: A Markov regime-switching approach

•This case study evaluates whether wake recategorization impacted departure throughputs at ATL.•Departures alternate between states of unconstrained and constrained departure throughputs.•A Markov-switching model determines the transition probabilities and duration of the two regimes.•There is a 91% chance departures remain in constrained regime after wake recat implementation.•There was a 37% chance departures switch to constrained regime after implementation.

This paper utilizes a Markov regime-switching model to decompose airport departures into two regimes and to investigate the change in departure throughputs before and after implementing wake recat at ATL. Although analysts may not always know with certainty which regime prevails and how long it may last, they can compute the transition probabilities and expected duration of each regime. After the implementation, there was a 91% chance that departure throughputs would remain unconstrained (up from 86% before implementation) and a 37% chance that departure throughputs would become constrained (up from 35% before implementation).