This study addresses the coexistence of increased safety risks and reduced operational efficiency in airport airfield departure operations under high traffic density conditions. It aims to improve the prediction accuracy of taxi time and the capability of departure metering control, thereby enhancing the safety and orderliness of airfield operations. A cooperative metering control framework for safe departure operations in the airfield is developed. A complete algorithm system is established, which includes unimpeded taxi time estimation, identification of traffic flow satu-ration critical points, characterization of runway operation modes, taxi time increment coefficient estimation, and pushback metering control. Calibration experiments are conducted based on Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport and Chengdu Tianfu International Airport. The results indicate that the proposed cooperative metering control framework effectively supports fine-grained regulation of departing aircraft. It demonstrates higher accu-racy in unobstructed taxi time estimation and taxi time prediction. The proposed metering control method achieves a good balance between operational efficiency and delay levels under appropriate congestion control levels by re-placing uncontrollable delays with controllable holding. The proposed methods can improve the utilization effi-ciency of airport surface resources and enhance the overall stability of departure operations, thereby providing valuable engineering support for promoting the transition of airport surface operations from passive response to proactive control.