Definition
An air traffic management procedure used at busy airports to balance the flow of departing aircraft with available runway capacity. Departure clearances and pushback or taxi releases are timed so that aircraft do not accumulate at the runway, reducing congestion on taxiways and at hold-short points.
Plain English
A way controllers space out departures by holding aircraft at the gate or ramp until it is their turn to taxi, instead of letting everyone line up at the runway and wait with engines running.
Context Anchor
You may encounter this at busy towered airports during periods of heavy departure traffic, weather delays, runway limits, or other conditions that make the departure line build up quickly.
Derivation
Metering comes from the idea of measuring out something at a controlled rate, the way a meter regulates flow. Here, the flow being measured is aircraft moving from gate to runway.
Why Pilots Care
It reduces excessive taxi times, fuel burn, and the chance of surface gridlock while maintaining safe spacing between aircraft.
Analogy
It is like a traffic light at a freeway on-ramp. The goal is not to stop traffic completely, but to release vehicles at a rate the main road can handle.
Intuition Check
Do not read “surface metering” as measuring the pavement or runway surface. Here, “surface” means airport ground operations, and “metering” means controlling the flow of aircraft.
Example Sentence 1
Ground informed us we had a fifteen-minute hold at the gate due to the surface metering program in effect for the morning departure push.
Example Sentence 2
Pilots were advised of a Surface Metering Program so they could plan for possible delays before engine start.