Forecasting peak passenger flows at airports

This article reviews concepts and issues relating to the definition, measurement and forecasting of peak passenger flows at airports, and outlines some recent work carried out by BAA plc, the owner and operator of several major airports in the UK.Abbreviations BHR Busy Hour Rate - SBR Standard Busy Rate - DFR Design Flow Rate     

Quantitative analysis of passenger and baggage security screening at airports

The terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 opened a new era in air transportation. The realization that civil aircraft can be used as powerful weapons of mass destruction by a small group of people has drastically increased the need for security screening procedures to protect civil flights. Serving as the interface between the air and land transportation modes, airports have become the main focus in the implementation of those procedures. The need to more thoroughly screen passengers and baggage, and the consequent increase in processing time, has created the need for more space for security checkpoints and baggage screening inside passenger terminal buildings—space that is costly and very difficult to find in existing buildings. This paper evaluates the impact those measures have had on the planning and operation of airport passenger terminals. Quantification of those impacts is performed with the use of discrete‐event simulation and spreadsheet models.     

A model to forecast aircraft operations at general aviation airports

Forecasting the demand for aviation activities is an important task in economic planning. Traditionally, forecasting the demand for general aviation airports has been done using trend and ratio analyses. Both techniques ignore the changes in many external factors that influence aviation activities. This paper develops an econometric model that relates the number of aircraft operations at a general aviation airport to some socioeconomic characteristics and supply variables. The model was estimated using data for 82 airports in the state of Georgia. The results of estimating the model suggest that the demand is inelastic with respect to total employment. The results also show that presence of aviation related services such as avionics, charter flights, rental, repair and crop dusting are important factors in determining aviation activities. The demand seems to be responsive to the location of the county as a tourist/recreational destination.     

Dealing with the efficient allocation of scarce resources at congested airports

The existing slot allocation mechanism, based on the International Air Transport Association (IATA) system and its complementary version of the European Union (EU) regulation, produces rather poor capacity allocation outcomes for congested EU airports since it fails to properly match slots requested with slots allocated to airlines. Inefficiencies during the initial allocation are mainly due to the problem complexity in conjunction to limited decision support available to slot coordinators. On the other hand, substantial inefficiencies give rise to severe slot misuse and unreasonably low utilisation of airport resources running already into scarcity. The objective of this paper is to develop an optimisation-based model implementing the existing EU/IATA rules, operational constraints, and coordination procedures with the ultimate objective to better accommodate airlines’ preferences at coordinated airports through the minimisation of the difference between the requested and the allocated slot times to airlines. The results of the model are assessed and compared vis-à-vis the allocation outcome produced according to current slot coordination practice in three regional Greek airports. The proposed model produces very promising results and demonstrates that there is large room for improvement of the efficiency of the current allocation outcome in a range between 14% and 95%. The discussion of the model results is complemented by a sensitivity analysis highlighting the importance of declared capacity and the magnitude of its influence on slot allocation efficiency.     

A two-stage taxi scheduling strategy at airports with multiple independent runways

Long taxiing times at large airports lead to fuel wastage and dissatisfied passengers. This paper investigates the 4D taxi scheduling problem in airports to minimize the taxiing time. We propose an iterative two-stage scheduling strategy. In the first stage, all aircrafts in a current schedule period are assigned initial 4D routes. In the second stage, landing aircrafts that are unavailable to fulfil their initially assigned routes are rescheduled using a shortest path algorithm based approach. In this paper, the simplified model used in most existing literature, that depicts a runway as having a single entrance and a single exit or even sets only one point to represent both of them has been discarded. Instead, we model the fact that a runway has multiple entrance and exit points and use an emerging concept—Runway Exit Availability (REA)—to measure the probability of clearing a runway from a specific exit during a specific time interval so that the taxiing scheduling model can be much higher approximation to the practical operation. An integer programming (IP) model factoring REA is proposed for assigning 4D taxiing routes in the first stage. The IP model covers most practical constraints faced in airport taxiing procedures, such as the rear-end/head-on conflict constraint, runway-crossing constraint, take-off/landing separation constraint, and taxi-out constraint. Besides, flight holding patterns at intersections are much more realistically modelled. Furthermore, to accelerate the solving process of the IP model, we have refined the formulation using several tricks. Simulation results by proposed scheduling approach for operations at the Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) for an entire day demonstrate a surprising taxiing time saving against the empirical data and simulation results based on a strategy similar to what being used now days while showing an acceptable running time of our approach, which supports that our approach may help in real operation in the future.     

The use of space availability information in “PARC” systems to reduce search times in parking facilities

Two different ways to manage availability information in parking facilities were evaluated in this article. First, in level 4 PARC systems (Parking Access and Revenue Control), when occupancy percentages for all garage levels are above 90% and 95%, the information on variable message sign (VMS) panel will indicate that there are no free spaces – censoring information. In this article, zoning is understood as the second information management tool; it consists of placing vehicle detection systems at intermediary points around the facility in such a way as to separate it into internal zones. It is a variation applicable to facilities with level 2 PARC systems, such as those in shopping centres, where a modification of the vehicle counting algorithm in the main program of the PARC system allows the determination of the number of free spaces in specific zones within the parking facility. According to the simulations that were carried out after testing an existing choice model, level 4 PARC systems are sufficiently effective in small facilities; the option of preparing “false” information when 5 or 10 free spaces are left on a garage level in order to influence user decisions has few practical repercussions. However, the separation into internal zones proposed for level 2 PARC systems shows a 16.2% reduction in search time.     

Analysis of parking cruising behaviour and parking location choice

ABSTRACT

This paper explores car drivers’ cruising behaviour and location choice for curb parking in areas with insufficient parking space based on a survey of car drivers in Beijing, China. Preliminary analysis of the data show that car drivers’ cruising behaviour is closely related to their parking duration and parking location. A multinomial probit (MNP) model is used to analyse cruising behaviour and the results show that the closer to the destination car drivers are, the more likely they choose to park on the curb. The adjacent locations are the basis of car drivers’ sequential parking decisions at different locations. The research results provide a better understanding of cruising behaviour for parking and recommendations for reducing cruising for parking. The provision of parking information can help regulate the parking demand distribution.     

Managerial efficiency of Brazilian airports

The efficiency of 35 Brazilian domestic airports was discussed with a view to identifying avenues to improvement in two dimensions. The first of these is improved management, which shows in the airport’s ability to generate financial returns. The second is the physical dimension, which shows the level of utilization of airport infrastructure. The data envelopment analysis methodology was used to measure distance from the airport efficient frontier and to enable avenues to managerial improvement to be identified.     

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.     

Expirable parking reservations for managing morning commute with parking space constraints

When total parking supply in an urban downtown area is insufficient, morning commuters would choose their departure times not only to trade off bottleneck congestion and schedule delays, but also to secure a parking space. Recent studies found that an appropriate combination of reserved and unreserved parking spaces can spread the departures of those morning commuters and hence reduce their total travel cost. To further mitigate both traffic congestion and social cost from competition for parking, this study considers a parking reservation scheme with expiration times, where commuters with a parking reservation have to arrive at parking spaces for the reservation before a predetermined expiration time. We first show that if all parking reservations have the same expiration time, it is socially preferable to set the reservations to be non-expirable, i.e., without expiration time. However, if differentiated expiration times are properly designed, the total travel cost can be further reduced as compared with the reservation scheme without expiration time, since the peak will be further smoothed out. We explore socially desirable equilibrium flow patterns under the parking reservation scheme with differentiated expiration times. Finally, efficiencies of the reservation schemes are examined.     

Non-parametric analyses of efficiency of airports

This paper estimates the efficiencies and productivity changes of 12 international airports in the Asia-Pacific region based on data from 1998 to 2006. We apply stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to compute efficiency estimates and use the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to analyze productivity changes. We use the SFA model with a translog-type production function after testing the statistical hypotheses. According to the results of the SFA hypothesis tests, airports have experienced a technological regression; the deviations from the efficiency frontier are caused more by technical inefficiency than random noise. However, the inefficiency was found to decrease. The MPI reveals a declining trend resulting more from technological change than from efficiency change, with a decrease in inefficiency. Taken together, both the hypothesis tests and the MPI not only provide consistent conclusions, but also suggest that airports should concentrate on technological progress.     

A parking model hierarchy

The last decade has seen considerable developments in computer assisted design procedures which enable planners to investigate the impacts of changes in the transport system. These developments have become more available to analysts through the introduction of microcomputers and computer graphics. Unfortunately, the impacts of parking on the transport have not been incorporated explicitly in many of these models since their prime concern is the movement of traffic. Parking system design and policy analysis can, however, benefit greatly from these developments in computer technology and availability. The design of parking systems can be improved and the investigation of policy impacts can be trialed or refined prior to their introduction using microcomputer packages. This paper outlines some developments in these areas. More specifically, it outlines a hierarchy or microcomputer models and information systems that can investigate parking policy and study the level of service provided by parking systems.     

Experience sampling in and around airports. Momentary subjective wellbeing,airports, and aviation noise in England

We explore the wellbeing of people in and around English airports using real-time data from a large spatial positioning experience sampling dataset (Mappiness). We analyze the association between subjective wellbeing reported in the moment and aviation, in terms of airport location, aircraft noise, and activities within airports. This is the first time that a large Experience Sample Method (ESM) of momentary wellbeing measurements has been used to quantify the associations between aviation and subjective wellbeing. Being within areas of high levels of aircraft noise is associated with lower levels of happiness and relaxation. Those surveyed in proximity to airports report significantly lower levels of relaxation. These findings have important implications to policy. Exploiting the panel nature of the ESM data provides the strongest causal claims to date of the negative association between aviation activities and subjective wellbeing. The Mappiness application also allows us to assess the association between airports and wellbeing on those inside them, and divide activities within airports between those who work there and those who are passing through for travel purposes, as well as the effects of aircraft noise beyond airports. This gives us a broader insight into the range of impacts, both positive and negative, that aviation has on peoples’ momentary wellbeing, which may be used to inform aviation noise mitigation and compensation policies in the future.     

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.     

Benchmarking airports with specific safety performance measures

The purpose of this paper is to develop safety performance measures and test the measures on data for air traffic management failure events. Failure events are classified by the severity of the consequence of occurrence, resulting in the rate of occurrence in severity categories. The safety measures are standard statistics calculated from this “distribution” for comparison of airport operations by stochastic ordering. For comparisons a benchmark is developed from the aggregation of failure data on a set of comparable airports. Airport performance is then compared with the benchmark using the defined safety measures. The benchmark comparison was implemented with failure data for major airports in Canada from 2005 to 2012. The results show a number of patterns and anomalies and some airports perform poorly in comparison to a class of similar operations. We conclude by suggesting benchmarking safety measures as a natural addition to the information system on aviation safety compiled by a national regulatory body to unravel anomalies such as implementation problems of a safety management system.     

Determinants of bicycle commuting in the Washington,DC region: The role of bicycle parking,cyclist showers,and free car parking at work

This article examines the role of bicycle parking, cyclist showers, free car parking and transit benefits as determinants of cycling to work. The analysis is based on commute data of workers in the Washington, DC area. Results of rare events logistic regressions indicate that bicycle parking and cyclist showers are related to higher levels of bicycle commuting—even when controlling for other explanatory variables. The odds for cycling to work are greater for employees with access to both cyclist showers and bike parking at work compared to those with just bike parking, but no showers at work. Free car parking at work is associated with 70% smaller odds for bike commuting. Employer provided transit commuter benefits appear to be unrelated to bike commuting. Regression coefficients for control variables have expected signs, but not all are statistically significant.     

Emissions from auxiliary power units and ground power units during intraday aircraft turnarounds at European airports

It is widely known that emissions from aircraft engines, Auxiliary Power Units (APU) and ground handling equipment contribute to air pollution at airports. During the aircraft turnaround process, the main source of emissions is the APU. The use of the APU can be significantly reduced if the aircraft stand is equipped to supply external electrical power and pre-conditioned air to the cabin. This paper analyses the actual duration of APU and external power usage during intraday aircraft turnarounds at 125 airports during June 2015. The data is derived from flight data recording units of more than 200 short-haul, narrow-body jet aircraft, conducting some 25,195 aircraft turnarounds and thus provides the most detailed assessment of aircraft power usage available. A common practice is for the APU to be running for a short period on arrival at the stand (arrival-cycle) and then again for a short period prior to departure (departure-cycle). It is identified in this study that departure-cycle emissions are three times greater than arrival-cycle emissions. These emissions could be reduced if more accurate forecasts of departure times are available to flight crew. The provision of external ground power is found to reduce emissions by up to 47.6%. However, the study also highlights that when the source of external power is a diesel-fuelled mobile Ground Power Unit (GPU), there is a net doubling in emissions of hydrocarbons. APU usage is also observed to vary with outside air temperature (OAT) leading to possible increases in emissions of up to 6%.     

Revenue sharing with multiple airlines and airports

This paper investigates the effects of concession revenue sharing between an airport and its airlines. It is found that the degree of revenue sharing will be affected by how airlines’ services are related to each other (complements, independent, or substitutes). In particular, when carriers provide strongly substitutable services to each other, the airport has incentive to charge airlines, rather than to pay airlines, a share of concession revenue. In these situations, while revenue sharing improves profit, it reduces social welfare. It is further found that airport competition results in a higher degree of revenue sharing than would be had in the case of single airports. The airport–airline chains may nevertheless derive lower profits through the revenue-sharing rivalry, and the situation is similar to a Prisoners’ Dilemma. As the chains move further away from their joint profit maximum, welfare rises beyond the level achievable by single airports. The (equilibrium) revenue-sharing proportion at an airport is also shown to decrease in the number of its carriers, and to increase in the number of carriers at competing airports. Finally, the effects of a ‘pure’ sharing contract are compared to those of the two-part sharing contract. It is found that whether an airport is subject to competition is critical to the welfare consequences of alternative revenue sharing arrangements.     

Flexible parking requirements for office developments: New support for public parking and ridesharing

The author examines new, flexible parking requirements in several U.S. cities and Canada. Flexible requirements provide relaxations in zoning code specifications for off-street parking in return for developer commitments to ridesharing measures, support of transit or in-lieu fees for public parking. Issues examined include whether developers take advantage of flexible requirements, whether agreements with developers lead to agreed-upon action, and whether actions lead to desired results. Based on experiences of several cities, implications and cautions are drawn for local planners. The first caution relates to cities using flexible requirements to collect in-lieu fees in support of public parking. Where cities delay providing parking, inflation may make it difficult to provide the desired parking supply. Or, developers may not choose to pay the fee, such as in the case where cities grant relaxations for other measures more attractive than paying the fees.Other implications relate to flexible requirements in support of ridesharing or transit. Developers will not necessarily take advantage of relaxations tied to support of these modes. Generally, developers will take the least-cost ways to gain relaxations. They may choose to provide the parking where transit or ridesharing measures are too costly or complex. Or, they may take relaxations easier to obtain than those for ridesharing and transit. Finally, even where developers do agree to ridesharing measures, the measures may not be effective. On the other hand, developer-sponsored actions have proven effective in some cities where tight or expensive parking prevails, or where neighborhood residents have organized against office commuters parking on neighborhood streets, or where other economic or community variables favor ridesharing and transit.