An empirical analysis of airport capacity expansion

Theoretical analyses of the impact of airport capacity expansion must model or make assumptions about the effect of capacity on demand, airline competition, aircraft types, fares and other characteristics of a given airport. In this paper, we use empirical data on historical schedules, fares, delays and demand for the busiest 150 airports in 2015 to examine the typical impact of historical capacity expansions. We find significant diversity in outcomes, with over half the expanded airports either using less than their pre-expansion capacity or remaining constrained even at post-expansion capacity by 2016. Many of the expected impacts, such as reductions in typical aircraft size, either do not materialise or are dominated by other effects (for example, recessions; airlines beginning or ending operations at an airport; changes in regulation). Behaviour on expansion is affected by slot control regulations and whether the airport is initially capacity-constrained. In particular, slot-controlled airports typically add new destinations and carriers on expansion rather than making significant changes to existing schedules.     

A tentative analysis of the impacts of an airport closure

This paper identifies the vulnerabilities of operations at Heathrow airport to a short airport closure. The system disruptions assessed are delays, flight rerouting or diversions to alternate airports, and flight cancellations. In addition, the impact on fuel consumption, and hence CO₂ emissions, is quantified using the Reorganized Air Traffic Control Mathematical Simulator Plus simulation model and the Advanced Emission Model tool. The results have implications for assessing how increased severe weather events associated with climate change may disrupt airport operations.     

Expanding airport capacity of cities under uncertainty: Strategies to mitigate congestion

Airport capacity constraints are increasingly challenging the growth of air traffic. At the same time, decision-making about airport capacity investments is extremely complex, involving trade-offs. This paper’s objective is to optimise a privately owned airport system’s capacity investment decision in a city under demand uncertainty. Next to the investment size, our real options model incorporates the timing of the investment, as well as the cost of congestion. The results reveal that the larger a city’s initial airport capacity, the smaller its investment will relatively be and the lower the occupancy rate threshold at which investment will take place. We also show that, in case of a higher demand growth combined with more demand uncertainty, the city will benefit from a significantly larger investment, but made later at a higher occupancy rate. In this case, cities with a small initial capacity will sometimes even more than double current capacity. Higher airport charges and an increase in non-aeronautical revenues both lead to a later investment in more capacity, due to the increased project attractiveness. An increase in congestion costs results in a larger investment made earlier, in order to eliminate delays. Airport operational cost and capacity holding cost increases both lead to smaller investments.     

A systematic approach to assess the effectiveness of airport noise mitigation strategies

Regional airports are often located very close to the urban area they serve and the increasing traffic rate that many of them have experienced in the last years has produced several impacts on the communities living close to the airport area, mainly aviation noise. If not properly managed, noise impacts produced by airport operations can cut down significantly the development of airport air traffic with direct effects on the economic and territorial systems. Aeronautical noise has greatly reduced in the last decade, due to aircraft design technological improvements and more severe regulations. However, the noise reduction during a single event does not make the issue of the airport location – and then the whole noise impact – less significant. This paper proposes an assessment process to evaluate the effects of actions adopted to reduce airport noise impacts on populated areas. Both airport-related factors – such as number of take-off; day-evening-night distributions of movements; aircraft type; flying paths – and land-use characteristics have been considered and combined in a density index that synthesizes the impacts of airport noise on the territory. The assessment process has been tested on a real case, the airport of Bologna in Northern Italy. The predicted results, compared with available real data for the test case, are significant and encourage the use of the proposed assessment process as decision support system for the airport management.     

Analysing and modelling some effects of solutions for matching the airport runway system capacity to demand

The paper deals with analysing and modelling some effects of three solutions for matching the airport runway system (landing) capacity to corresponding demand. These are: i) charging congestion applied to the NY LaGuardia airport (New York, USA); ii) deployment of the innovative operational procedures supported by the new technologies developing in the scope of European SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) and U.S. NextGen (Next Generation) program applied to the system of two closely-spaced parallel runways at Dubai International airport (Dubai, UAE (United Arab Emirates)); and iii) building the new additional runway(s) applied to the runway system of three London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted (London, UK).The results have shown that each of the considered solutions can contribute to more efficient and effective matching of the airport runway (landing) capacity to the current and expected (prospectively growing) airside demand under given (specified) conditions.     

Managing tourism investment opportunities under uncertainty: a real options approach

This paper provides an empirical example of the valuation of real options in a large‐scale tourism project. The main aim of this article is to elaborate the investment decision process in the evaluation of a ski centre enlargement project by employing elements of the real options methodology. Monte Carlo simulation was used to value the options as it offers the flexibility to directly simulate the uncertainty factors. Traditional discount cash flow analysis points the investment as profitable, although the real options approach proves it as not economically feasible. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

A hybrid fuzzy MCDM approach for mitigating airport congestion: A case in Ninoy Aquino International Airport

In this paper, we introduce the application of an integrated fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to mitigate airport congestion which affects the on-time performance of airlines, operational reputation of airports, and air travel experience of passengers. In a classical approach, when congestion occurs at the destination airport while the aircraft is en-route, an air traffic flow management action is prompted for implementation. In selecting the most suitable action in the event of airport congestion, the decision must reflect the multiple criteria nature of the problem as well as the uncertainty and vagueness associated with the decision-making process; thus, an integrated fuzzy MCDM is adopted. The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated in a case study at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. It is found that stakeholders of the commercial aviation industry favored to apply rerouting, among other actions, as this satisfies aviation safety as the most prioritized criterion.     

A new approach to quantify the benefit to air travelers resulting from airport capacity expansion

This paper proposes a utility-based methodology to quantify passengers’ benefit resulting from airlines’ adaptation and improvement of service after airport expansion. A numerical example is given to demonstrate its applications in practice.     

Air traffic forecast and its impact on runway capacity. A System Dynamics approach

The uninterrupted growth of air traffic in Colombia has been reinforced since the 1990s by a public policy of liberalization of airspace, and by redirecting public and private investment towards the modernization and updating of airport infrastructures, giving in concession the busiest airports in the country, 19 to date. In the commercial air sector, and in this same period, the flag airline was privatized and new air operators, including low cost airlines (LCC), entered the market. Since 2012, air fares are completely deregulated. Consequently, in the last two and a half decades, passenger transport in Colombia grew by 863%. This important growth rate has been driven and led by the country's main airport, the Bogotá-El Dorado International Airport (BOG), in the capital of Colombia. But some technical reports consider the airport will reach its maximum capacity in the short term mainly because of its inability to expand its airfield (runway system). Due to this circumstance, the aeronautical public authority of Colombia gave course to the planning, design and construction of a new airport (complementary) on the outskirts of the city of Bogotá, which will enter the design phase in 2026/2027. Therefore, it is considered suitable the development of a traffic forecast for BOG in the medium term and to evaluate the impact of future demand on the runway capacity of the airport. Then, and due to the complexity of the air transport forecast, the use of System Dynamics (SD), is considered to be appropriate as an analysis approach. System Dynamics is based on feedback control theory and it is equipped with mathematical computer simulation models, which uses linear and non-linear differential equations. The results suggests a need to expand the airport case study (runway system) after mid-2019, where the current capacity utilization factor is around 100% and two to three runways will be required for the normal operation; after October 2022 the number runways required is set to three until the last period simulated (2023).     

Design of limited-stop bus service with capacity constraint and stochastic travel time

This paper develops a mathematical model for the optimal stopping design of limited-stop bus service, which allows each bus vehicle to skip some stops. To better reflect the reality, this paper considers the vehicle capacity and stochastic travel time. Also, vehicles are all allowed to skip stops whereas any stop is not allowed to be skipped by two consecutive vehicles. A hybrid artificial bee colony (ABC) and Monte Carlo method is developed to solve the optimal stopping strategy. Finally, the model and solution method are validated by a numerical example, and a sensitivity analysis is performed on the passenger demand.     

An appraisal of the CORINE land cover database in airport catchment area analysis using a GIS approach

This paper presents a free available dataset, the CORINE land cover that helps dealing with the biases caused by pre-defined and heterogeneous census district boundaries in airport catchment area analysis in Europe. Using this dataset and a conventional GIS software it is possible to measure the size of the population within catchment areas at the same spatial level for all EU airports, allowing for consistent comparisons among airports. To illustrate the potential of the CORINE/GIS approach, the size of the population in the catchment areas of all European airports was determined. The empirical exercise has an aggregate perspective, but this database presents many other possibilities of analysis to perform in a case-by-case basis.     

A large neighborhood search heuristic to establish an optimal ad-hoc hubbing strategy in the wake of a large-scale airport outage

Abrupt airport outages can cause diversions and fuel-critical situations for flights, leading to costly passenger misconnections. We develop a large neighborhood search heuristic to optimize the rerouting of flights bound for a disrupted airport to a hub airport that is not disrupted, with the goal of accommodating passengers on existing flights departing the non-disrupted hub. The objective of the heuristic is to identify and reroute flights to the ad-hoc hub(s) – non-disrupted hub airport(s) – that minimize the sum of passenger travel time and wait time. We minimize the passenger cost as the sum of passenger travel time to the diversion airport and wait time for a connecting flight at the ad-hoc hub airport, subject to on-board fuel and diversion airport capacity constraints. We use the heuristic to determine how a coordinated traffic management strategy could have diverted flights immediately following a real-world airport outage.     

Spillover effects of the development constraints in London Heathrow Airport

In this article we assess the growth impact of London Heathrow’s development constraints on other airports in the UK. To test the relationship we use a two-stage methodology yielding an estimate of a congestion spillover effect. Our data are passenger traffic from 1990 to 2012 containing both intercontinental and European air traffic. For intercontinental air traffic, our results show high congestion spillover effect between Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and significant but lesser effect to Stansted airport. We also find significant congestion spillover effects from Heathrow to the spatially more distant Manchester and Birmingham airports, showing the extensive spatial impact of Heathrow’s development constraints. For European air traffic, controlling for low-cost air carrier growth, only two airports show significant congestion spillover effects: Gatwick and London City Airports. Illustrating that low-cost carriers do not operate from Heathrow, so its limitations cannot affect the predominant low-cost air traffic in other airports. The novel methodology we present in this paper can be applied to congestion research in general to assess regional and modal spills within networks.     

Analysis of the operational performance of brazilian airport terminals: A multicriteria approach with De Borda-AHP integration

ObjectiveThis study proposes a multicriteria approach for the comparative analysis of the operational performance of Brazilian airport terminals.MethodologyTwo multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods – De Borda and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) - were applied in an integrated manner to the database of the performance report from the Brazilian Department of Civil Aviation (Secretaria de Aviação Civil – SAC/PR), composed of evaluations issued by 18,062 respondents regarding 15 airport terminals, 12 of which are analyzed in this study considering 8 evaluation criteria. On the first level, the AHP method was used to assign weights to the criteria. On the second level, the De Borda method was applied to rank the alternatives.ResultsThe proposed method resulted in a final ranking of alternatives that was significantly different from the one presented in the SAC/PR report.Contribution to knowledgeThe employment of the integrated De Borda-AHP method is not common and ensured a greater approximation with the overall user satisfaction indicator, showing that it is the more appropriate methodological option when compared with the arithmetic mean commonly used in public reports.Contribution to societyBased on the obtained ranking, air transport users will be able to have a more realistic comparative picture of the main airport terminals analyzed.Contribution to the management of the airport systemThis work contributes to the strategic planning and allocation of investments seeking to adapt and expand the sector, and also to the continuous improvement of the service levels provided at airports.     

An examination of the effects of ride-hailing services on airport parking demand

The emergence of ride-hailing services offered by the Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) globally are substantially affecting how we travel by car, and as such, use parking facilities. Airport parking, which is a substantial source of revenue for the airports, is no different and anecdotal evidence suggest a reduction in parking revenue in airports in recent years as a result of the popularity of ride-hailing services. This research investigates the effects of the entry of ride-hailing services on airport parking patronage using three large airports (John F Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and LaGuardia) in the US as a case study. Intervention analysis technique was used on time-series monthly parking data at these airports, controlling for passenger numbers. Results indicate there was a statistically significant reduction in the numbers of cars parked at all three airports since the introduction of ride-hailing services, confirming the anecdotal evidence. Findings have implications not only for airport business and revenue models, but also for wider effects of ride-hailing and automation.     

A robust optimization approach for the road network daily maintenance routing problem with uncertain service time

This paper studies the robust optimization approach for the routing problem encountered in daily maintenance operations of a road network. The uncertainty of service time is considered. The robust optimization approach yields routes that minimize total cost while being less sensitive to substantial deviations of service times. A robust optimization model is developed and solved by the branch-and-cut method. In computational experiments, the behavior of the robust solutions and their performance are analyzed using Monte Carlo simulation. The robust optimization model is also compared with a classic chance-constrained programming model. The experimental analysis provides managerial insights for decision makers to determine an appropriate routing strategy.     

A decision framework for successful private participation in the airport sector

As private participation in public airports becomes a global trend, there are a number of concerns and debates over the conflicting interests of the private and public sectors. For instance, the private sector's interest in maximizing profits often opposes the public sector's interest in protecting the public interest and social welfare. In this paper, we reframe the conflict in terms of principal-agent theory, and inform policymakers to understand public-private management problems in a broader context. Firstly, we demonstrate how various ownership and governance structures shape the private participation based on (1) ownership-type, (2) mode of ownership shift, and (3) ex-post government control. Secondly, we then highlight that this process should be context-based, and examine the recent case of Incheon International Airport (IIA) in South Korea to illustrate the importance of contextual factors. Lastly, we provide comprehensive recommendations to policymakers involved in bringing private partners into the airport sector, which include setting a clear agenda, exercising a reasonable level of control, understanding the sharing of risk and responsibility under different structures, and assessing technical, economic and political factors that may affect the policy outcome.     

The influence of personality traits on airport public transport access mode choice: A hybrid latent class choice modeling approach

Many objective and subjective factors affect individual tendencies. Such subjective factors include personality traits, attitudes, identities, perceptions, and feelings. The choice of transportation mode is an individual tendency that is considered important in policy-making decisions, and it can affect sustainable transportation, particularly in metropolitan areas. The present study’s main aim is to determine the impact of the Big Five Personality Factors on individual preferences toward public transportation modes. We use data from a survey conducted in January and February of 2015 at Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA). Passengers were asked to indicate their preferred mode of transportation to access the IKIA and to respond to questions on the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Based on 557 valid responses, hybrid discrete latent class modeling was conducted to understand the heterogeneity in the respondents’ individual preferences regarding the Big Five Personality Factors and their preferences toward public modes of transportation. The results indicated that individuals who display neuroticism were more likely than the others to be concerned about carrying heavy luggage and about inclement weather conditions when using public transportation. In addition, interesting results indicated that conscientious individuals likely paid more attention to travel cost than to any other attribute of public transportation, and the model of the conscientious latent personality trait was a better fit to the data. Finally, this paper examined the taste heterogeneity of each personality trait and the results indicate the usefulness of considering personality traits in mode choice models for richer insights toward sustainable transportation.