Meetings facilities at airports

This paper investigates the extent to which airports act as venues, the importance that airports place on this type of activity, and whether it is certain categories of airport that are involved in this type of activity. Airports have always been a vital element of business travel in providing access to a destination where business can be conducted or where meetings, conferences and events can be held. In this situation it is largely the availability of air services at the airport that will attract passengers rather than the airport itself. However in recent years airports have become more than just facilitators of access and have developed infrastructure and services (’meetings facilities’) that allow them to become meeting venues in their own right.     

Minimum delay or maximum efficiency? Rising productivity of available capacity at airports: Review of current practice and future needs

Around the world airports are facing capacity constraints more and more everyday, generally the runway capacities are restricted by governments and airports are unable to accept additional aircrafts. Technological improvements can decrease the necessity of policy limitations in terms of noise and air pollution. Rapidly increasing numbers of traffic developed severe scarce capacity, congestion and delay problems and the capacity that is available, needs to be allocated as efficiently as possible. Airport capacity can be allocated in different ways; administrative capacity management with slot allocation and traffic distribution rules; market-based capacity management with slot auctioning, secondary trading and peak pricing; a combination of both mechanisms; and no regulation mechanism as applied in the USA with the exceptions of busiest airports. The review contains the analysis of current state of practice and the review of relevant research on capacity and slot allocation modelling with policy and demand management perspectives. It targets identification of existing problems, inefficiencies, gaps and requirements in current practice of slot allocation mechanisms, defining options for change in policies to allocate slots more efficiently, transparent and fair by investigating market-based mechanisms. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing research for improvements to the slot allocation process that can be rationally implemented in practice in order to improve efficiency, fairness and transparency. For that purpose, based on these slot allocation approaches, we provide a critical review of status-quo, literature and current research with demand and congestion management perspectives by considering overall social welfare, airline and airport surplus, passenger welfare and explore hypothetical, computational and practical challenges that have arisen from cross-disciplinary methodologies.     

SeMS and sensibility: Security management systems and the management of risk in the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

Following International Air Transportation Association requirement for all member airlines and airports to have a security management system (SeMS) beginning 1 March 2007, many organizations are looking to learn from safety and quality management systems. Without specific guidelines or best practices, organizations are forced to imitate these processes designed for different goals. Since safety, quality, and security environments operate on radically different principles, SeMS implementation must take a different tack. The case of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority illustrates the importance of a custom-designed program that meets public and corporate needs. The Authority is responsible for security screening of passengers, non-passengers, and baggage within selected airports. As a crown corporation with a precise statutory mandate and regulatory environment, the development of a SeMS illustrates some of the key problems for the application of SeMS to larger organizations.     

Impact of pandemic control over airport economics: Reconciling public health with airport business through a streamlined approach in pandemic control

Rapid aviation commercialisation and upsurge in worldwide affluence created a new avenue for disease proliferation across countries at an unprecedented rate. Epidemic and pandemic occurrences over the last decade demonstrate airports' role in disease transmission; while also exhibiting their importance as containment nodes. Tremendous amount of resources and effort are necessary to achieve the latter but inevitably, disrupt normal operations. The contrasting objectives between public health authorities and airport authorities result in compromising measures for both parties. Broadly similar controlling measures were adopted by various airports during outbreaks in the last decade. Their effectiveness have been analysed in terms of disease control; economic impact to airports were, however, not quantified. This paper concludes that more efficient airport pandemic control plans cause less severe economic impact on airports during pandemic and recommends a streamlined approach that improves overall effect of pandemic control while minimising economic impacts to airport businesses.     

Is increasing aircraft size common practice of airlines at congested airports?

If the overall demand for air transport grows, but additional airport capacity is not available at congested airports, we could assume that airlines will offer flights with more seats in order to cope with the demand. An analysis of frequency and average seat capacity developments at congested, and not yet congested airports, has shown that the hypothesis of bigger aircraft being used in congested situations is valid in most instances, although not at all airports. The objective of this paper is to report on an analysis of the development of average seat capacity at congested airports, in contrast to the situation at not yet congested airports, and to find out the reasons for airlines increasing the number of seats at congested airports, by means of a statistical model using variables including the degree of airport congestion and average flight distance.