Preference-based evolutionary algorithm for airport surface operations

In addition to time efficiency, minimisation of fuel consumption and related emissions has started to be considered by research on optimisation of airport surface operations as more airports face severe congestion and tightening environmental regulations. Objectives are related to economic cost which can be used as preferences to search for a region of cost efficient and Pareto optimal solutions. A multi-objective evolutionary optimisation framework with preferences is proposed in this paper to solve a complex optimisation problem integrating runway scheduling and airport ground movement problem. The evolutionary search algorithm uses modified crowding distance in the replacement procedure to take into account cost of delay and fuel price. Furthermore, uncertainty inherent in prices is reflected by expressing preferences as an interval. Preference information is used to control the extent of region of interest, which has a beneficial effect on algorithm performance. As a result, the search algorithm can achieve faster convergence and potentially better solutions. A filtering procedure is further proposed to select an evenly distributed subset of Pareto optimal solutions in order to reduce its size and help the decision maker. The computational results with data from major international hub airports show the efficiency of the proposed approach.     

Demand uncertainty and airport capacity choice

This study analyzes the effects of demand uncertainty on airport capacity choices. It shows that demand uncertainty will not change optimal capacity choice if demand variation is low and capacity cost is high; otherwise the optimal airport capacity under demand uncertainty will be larger than the case when a deterministic mean demand is considered. These conclusions are robust with respect to the different market structures considered in this study and hold for both profit-maximizing and welfare-maximizing airports. The moderating effects of commercial revenue, capital cost, and airport operation cost on airport capacity choice are qualitatively the same in the cases of uncertain demand and deterministic demand.     

Demonstration of reduced airport congestion through pushback rate control

Airport surface congestion results in significant increases in taxi times, fuel burn and emissions at major airports. This paper describes the field tests of a congestion control strategy at Boston Logan International Airport. The approach determines a suggested rate to meter pushbacks from the gate, in order to prevent the airport surface from entering congested states and to reduce the time that flights spend with engines on while taxiing to the runway. The field trials demonstrated that significant benefits were achievable through such a strategy: during eight four-hour tests conducted during August and September 2010, fuel use was reduced by an estimated 12,250–14,500 kg (4000–4700 US gallons), while aircraft gate pushback times were increased by an average of only 4.4 min for the 247 flights that were held at the gate.     

Controlled time of arrival windows for already initiated energy-neutral continuous descent operations

Continuous descent operations with controlled times of arrival at one or several metering fixes could enable environmentally friendly procedures without compromising terminal airspace capacity. This paper focuses on controlled time of arrival updates once the descent has been already initiated, assessing the feasible time window (and associated fuel consumption) of continuous descent operations requiring neither thrust nor speed-brake usage along the whole descent (i.e. only elevator control is used to achieve different metering times). Based on previous works, an optimal control problem is formulated and numerically solved. The earliest and latest times of arrival at the initial approach fix have been computed for the descent of an Airbus A320 under different scenarios, considering the potential altitudes and distances to go when receiving the controlled time of arrival update. The effects of the aircraft mass, initial speed, longitudinal wind and position of the initial approach fix on the time window have been also investigated. Results show that time windows about three minutes could be achieved for certain conditions, and that there is a trade-off between robustness facing controlled time of arrival updates during the descent and fuel consumption. Interestingly, minimum fuel trajectories almost correspond to those of minimum time.     

Assessing the impact of tactical airport surface operations on airline schedule block time setting

With the growth of air traffic, airport surfaces are congested and air traffic operations are disrupted by the formation of bottlenecks on the surface. Hence, improving the efficiency and predictability of airport surface operations is not only a key goal of NASA’s initiatives in Integrated Arrival/Departure/Surface (IADS) operations, but also has been recognized as a critical aspect of the FAA NextGEN implementation plan. While a number of tactical initiatives have been shown to be effective in improving airport surface operations from a service provider’s perspective, their impacts on airlines’ scheduled block time (SBT) setting, which has been found to have direct impact on airlines’ on-time performance and operating cost, have received little attention. In this paper, we assess this impact using an econometric model of airline SBT combined with a before/after analysis of the implementation of surface congestion management (SCM) at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in 2010. Since airlines do not consider gate delay in setting SBT, we find that reduction in taxi-out time variability resulting from SCM leads to more predictable taxi-out times and thus decreases in SBT. The JFK SCM implementation is used as a case study to validate model prediction performance. The observed SBT decrease between 2009 and 2011 at JFK is 4.8 min and our model predicts a 4.2 min decrease. In addition, Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) is used as an example to demonstrate how different surface operations improvements scenarios can be evaluated in terms of SBT reduction.     

Investigation of environmental justice analysis in airport planning practice from 2000 to 2010

Municipal airport owners and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regularly evaluate capacity and demand to decide if and when airports need more infrastructure. New infrastructure can alter the profile of noise, emissions, and land use, which may affect the quality of life for airport-adjacent communities. When the FAA and airport owners initiate infrastructure expansion, they must conduct environmental justice analysis to measure the distribution of negative externalities on nearby communities. This research investigates the environmental justice methodologies and narratives reported in planning documents for nineteen airport capacity expansions planned or deployed from 2000 to 2010 in the United States. The mixed-methods approach analyzes airport operations data, spatial demographic data, and planning artifacts to determine whether the environmental justice analyses were robust. This research proposes alternative metrics, the ‘Risk of disproportionate impact’ and ‘Capacity strain’, to further contextualize the presence of protected population groups alongside capacity needs. The main finding of the study is that the planning documents did not consistently detect environmental justice impacts, nor did they consistently confer importance to those impacts when high proportions of protected populations were detected. As a result, the social costs of collective airport expansion are unclear and likely underestimated. This study identifies two limitations that undermined the environmental justice analysis throughout the airport sample: (1) inconsistent methodological choices impeded the detection of impacts and, (2) narrative interpretations tended to ‘null’ the finding even when impacts were detected.     

Predictability impacts of airport surface automation

Past evaluations of airport surface operations automation technologies have focused on capacity utilization, delay mitigation and fuel efficiency impacts. Predictability, while recognized as an important operational performance goal, has received little attention. One reason could be that applicable predictability metrics have not been developed in the context of airport surface operations management. This research fills the gap by proposing metrics for predictability performance evaluation. Using results from a SARDA human-in-the-loop simulation conducted at NASA Ames’ Future Flight Central, we present a comprehensive assessment of the predictability impacts of airport surface automation. A wide range of the impacts is considered, which includes variability in taxi-out time, predictability of take-off time and take-off sequence, entropy of the airfield state, and perceived predictability from users.     

Parameters of moving sidewalks for airport terminal pier fingers

A moving sidewalk system installed at an airport pier finger is analyzed. The optimal length of the moving sidewalk and the optimal spacing between the access points which minimize the total cost of the system are obtained using methods of calculus, for a number of cases based on the different proportions of arriving, departing and transferring passengers and for two different types of moving sidewalks: elevated, at‐grade.

The optimal length of the moving sidewalk is shown to be linearly related to the length of the concourse, and to the total passenger demand. The effect due to preticketed transferees is insignificant.

The optimal spacing between access points is shown to be proportional to the square‐root of either the cost of an access escalator or the cost of inconvenience to a passenger due to an intermediate gap, depending on the moving sidewalk system under consideration. It also changes with the percentage of preticketed transferees.     

Comparison of emerging ground propulsion systems for electrified aircraft taxi operations

Aviation is a mode with high fuel consumption per passenger mile and has significant environmental impacts. It is important to seek ways to reduce fuel consumption by the aviation sector, but it is difficult to improve fuel efficiency during the en-route cruise phase of flight because of technology barriers, safety requirements, and the mode of operations of air transportation. Recent efforts have emphasized the development of innovative Aircraft Ground Propulsion Systems (AGPS) for electrified aircraft taxi operations. These new technologies are expected to significantly reduce aircraft ground-movement-related fuel burn and emissions. This study compares various emerging AGPS systems and presents a comprehensive review on the merits and demerits of each system, followed with the local environmental impacts assessment of these systems. Using operational data for the 10 busiest U.S. airports, a comparison of environmental impacts is performed for four kinds of AGPS: conventional, single engine-on, external, and on-board systems. The results show that there are tradeoffs in fuel and emissions among these emerging technologies. On-board system shows the best performance in the emission reduction, while external system shows the least fuel burn. Compared to single-engine scenario, external AGPS shows the reduction of HC and CO emissions but the increase of NO_x emission. When a general indicator is considered, on-board AGPS shows the best potential of reducing local environmental impacts. The benefit-cost analysis shows that both external and on-board systems are worth being implemented and the on-board system appeals to be more beneficial.     

Airport capacity increase via the use of braking profiles

Many airports are encountering the problem of insufficient capacity, which is particularly severe in periods of increased traffic. A large number of elements influence airport capacity, but one of the most important is runway occupancy time. This time depends on many factors, including how the landing roll procedure is performed. The procedure usually does not include the objective to minimize the runway occupancy time. This paper presents an analysis which shows that the way of braking during landing roll has an essential impact on runway throughput and thus on airport capacity. For this purpose, the landing roll simulator (named ACPENSIM) was created. It uses Petri nets and is a convenient tool for dynamic analysis of aircraft movement on the runway with given input parameters and a predetermined runway exit. Simulation experiments allowed to create a set of nominal braking profiles that have different objective functions: minimizing the runway occupancy time, minimizing noise, minimizing tire wear, maximizing passenger comfort and maximizing airport capacity as a whole. The experiments show that there is great potential to increase airport capacity by optimizing the braking procedure. It has been shown that by using the proposed braking profiles it is possible to reduce the runway occupancy time even by 50%.     

A literature review of flexible development of airport terminals

The Master Plan has long been the traditional go-to approach to airport development. It was originally conceived for a scenario of stable growth. In recent decades, however, the airport industry has undergone substantial structural changes, with the traditional Master Plan progressively revealing limitations with regard to airports coping with the market’s unpredictability. There have since been increased calls for flexibility in the approach as an alternative or as a complement to the traditional Master Plan. A flexible development plan helps to accommodate changes within terminals. This paper presents a review of the current literature on airport terminal flexibility, covering a total of 19 reference works. The works were analysed in terms of the concepts, definitions and deployment frameworks, or similar. The review reveals that research in airport terminal flexibility is still in its early stages. A consensual definition has yet to be defined and no robust framework for deploying flexibility has been defined. We propose a new definition of flexible development. Furthermore, flexibility has been studied essentially in the context of expansion. However, in certain regions where land availability is scarce, other forms of airport development may be more important. We conclude the paper with suggestions for future research areas.     

A critical examination of an airport noise mitigation scheme and an aircraft noise charge: the case of capacity expansion and externalities at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) airport

In the wake of the Australian airline liberalization in 1990 and its forecasted impact on air traffic, capacity has been expanded at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) airport (Sydney KSA) – Australia's busiest commercial airport – with the construction of the third runway in 1994. Coinciding with the approval for this capacity expansion, the Commonwealth Government amended the Federal Airports Corporation (FAC) Act to direct the FAC to carry out activities which protect the environment from the effects of aircraft operations, with the cost to be borne by the airline industry according to the ‘Polluter Pays Principle'. Noise management plans were part of the conditions for developmental approval for a third runway. To this end, since 1995, Sydney KSA imposes a noise levy designed to generate sufficient revenues to fund a noise mitigation scheme. Although the issues of aircraft noise, in particular its impact on property values and land use planning around the airport, have been extensively addressed in the literature, no one has empirically examined the implications of new environmental policies in conjunction with airline liberalization and change in airport infrastructure. Principles and policy analyses are discussed in this paper. By focusing on the specifics of Sydney KSA, broader policy issues likely to be relevant for other major airports around the world are discussed.     

Microscopic simulation of transit operations: policy studies with the MISTRANSIT application programming interface

Abstract

Microscopic traffic simulators are the most advanced tools for representing the movement of vehicles on a transport network. However, the energy spent in traffic microsimulation has been mainly oriented to cars. Little interest has been devoted to more sophisticated models for simulating transit systems. Commercial software has some options to incorporate the operation of transit vehicles, but they are insufficient to properly consider a real public transport system. This paper develops an Application Programming Interface, called MIcroscopic Simulation of TRANSIT (MISTRANSIT), using the commercial microsimulator PARAllel MICroscopic Simulation. MISTRANSIT makes advances in three ways: public transport vehicles can have new characteristics; passengers are incorporated and traced as individual objects; and specific models represent the interaction between passengers and vehicles at stops. This paper presents the modelling approach as well as various experiments to illustrate the feasibility of MISTRANSIT for studying policy operations of transit systems.     

Scheduling of airport runway operations using stochastic branch and bound methods

In this paper we present a solution methodology based on the stochastic branch and bound algorithm to find optimal, or close to optimal, solutions to the stochastic airport runway scheduling problem. The objective of the scheduling problem is to find a sequence of aircraft operations on one or several runways that minimizes the total makespan, given uncertain aircraft availability at the runway. Enhancements to the general stochastic branch and bound algorithm are proposed and we give the specific details pertaining to runway scheduling. We show how the algorithm can be terminated early with solutions that are close to optimal, and investigate the impact of the uncertainty level. The computational experiment indicates that the sequences obtained using the stochastic branch and bound algorithm have, on average, 5–7% shorter makespans than sequences obtained using deterministic sequencing models. In addition, the proposed algorithm is able to solve instances with 14 aircraft using less than 1 min of computation time.     

Effects of high-speed rail and airline cooperation under hub airport capacity constraint

This paper analyzes the effects of cooperation between a hub-and-spoke airline and a high-speed rail (HSR) operator when the hub airport may be capacity-constrained. We find that such cooperation reduces traffic in markets where prior modal competition occurs, but may increase traffic in other markets of the network. The cooperation improves welfare, independent of whether or not the hub capacity is constrained, as long as the modal substitutability in the overlapping markets is low. However, if the modal substitutability is high, then hub capacity plays an important role in assessing the welfare impact: If the hub airports are significantly capacity-constrained, the cooperation improves welfare; otherwise, it is likely welfare reducing. Through simulations we further study the welfare effects of modal asymmetries in the demands and costs, heterogeneous passenger types, and economies of traffic density. Our analysis shows that the economies of traffic density alone cannot justify airline–HSR cooperation.     

航空货运产业关联性及临空产业体系构建研究

本文将从航空经济链条体系结构入手,运用投入产出法对航空货运业与各产业部门的关联性进行定量分析,构建以运输成本为主要影响因素的区位选择指标分析货运枢纽机场的产业带动机制。最后本文对目前我国航空货运业对国民经济的整体贡献进行评价,并提出通过航空货运业带动区域经济发展的政策建议。     

Congestion spill effects of Heathrow and Frankfurt airports on connection traffic in European and Gulf hub airports

We develop two stage fixed-effects single-spill and double-spill models for congestion connection spills of London Heathrow and Frankfurt airports on 9 hub airports in Europe and the Gulf. Our panel data covers connection traffic from 1997 to 2013 for Heathrow and 1997 to 2011 for Frankfurt. The single-spill results support strongly that the connection spills from Heathrow’s capacity limitations do strengthen competing hub airports of major alliance groups and to a lesser degree one Gulf hub. The double-spill model for Heathrow and Frankfurt shows nearly asymmetric overall spill characteristics between the two airports. Our results underline the influence of airline network strategies on congestion spills as European airline networks are shaped by alliances and umbrella mergers. Thus, the airline network perspective in airport capacity expansion decisions needs to play a greater role, as indicated by our asymmetric results for overall spill effects between Heathrow and Frankfurt airports.     

Joint impact of competition,ownership form and economic regulation on airport performance and pricing

The combined impact of ownership form, economic regulation and competition on airport performance is analyzed using data envelopment analysis to measure cost efficiency in the first stage and regression analysis to measure the impact of the environment in the second stage. The empirical results of an analysis of European and Australian airports over a 10 year timeframe reveal that under relatively non-competitive conditions, public airports operate less cost efficiently than fully private airports. Irrespective of ownership form, regulation is necessary to emulate competitive forces thus pushing airport management towards cost efficiency and reasonable pricing policies. Under potential regional or hub competition, economic regulation inhibits airports of any ownership form from operating and pricing efficiently. Although public and fully private airports operate equally efficiently in a competitive setting, private airports still set higher aeronautical charges. Furthermore, mixed ownership forms with a majority public holding are neither cost efficient nor low price, irrespective of the level of competition.     

Effects of passenger characteristics and terminal layout on airport retail revenue: an agent-based simulation approach

This paper examines the effect of passenger characteristics and terminal layout on airport retail revenue using an agent-based simulation approach. Simulation results show that passenger mix (that is, the mix of shopper types according to a typology of airport shoppers) has a profound effect on airport retail revenue; the larger the number of ‘shopping lovers’ there are among passengers, the higher the airport retail revenue. Results also reveal that group travel can lead to negative effects on retail in certain terminal layouts, and that the amount of free dwell time that a passenger has can affect spending due to less retail engagement. This paper shows a combined effect of passenger characteristics and terminal layout on airport retail revenue, and discusses the implications of these results for future airport terminal design that aims to maximise retail potential.     

Evaluating the operational performance of airside and landside at Chinese airports with novel inputs

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates the operational performance of airside and landside at Chinese airports with two novel inputs. Furthermore, the airport landside operation is decomposed into passenger-terminal operations and cargo-warehouse operations. One novel input is the capability of the runway system which is introduced into airside performance evaluation. The other novel input is cargo warehousing which is introduced into landside performance evaluation. To address multiple optimal solutions when estimating Returns to Scale in Data Envelopment Analysis, we adopted the Zhu and Shen method. This empirical study shows that neither the number of runways nor total runway length is a genuine index of runway system capability in the evaluation of airside performance. Only four airports achieved full efficiency in all eight measures while eight airports did not achieve any full efficiency. In addition, one airport did not perform well in the benchmark analysis.