Airport Planning and Management

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Airport Capacity and Delay
Factors Affecting Capacity and Delay
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Managing an airport is technical as it comprises of a massive variety of systems, rules and regulations, workers, facilities, and users. Operations are usually intricate, finely-tuned balance between demand and volume, customer experience and the service cost, and the anticipated and the unexpected. The success of an airport is defined by its capacity to be the place where cargos and commuters travel to and from other airstrips. Many difficulties encountered in planning are caused by the size and diversity, and through controlled by laws, every airport has its specific issues as each is an independent decision maker. This paper discusses the issues of airport capacity and delay and the related causes.

Airport Capacity and Delay

Delay is a key concern of airport operators and users associated with flights operating out of schedules due to prolonged aircraft queues before landing or take-off. The delays usually culminate in augmented costs of operations and wastage of passengers’’ time. Lack of capacity is a term commonly used to refer to the cause of the airport delay (Santos et al., 2017). It implies that facilities such as taxiways, runways and gates are insufficient and cannot accommodate the passengers at the peak of demand.

Practically, a flight is said to have delayed if it departures or arrives fifteen minutes past the scheduled time. For instance, according to Santos et al. (2017), in the year 2015, about 17.5% of the scheduled flights in the United States had delays, and about 21.0% experienced the same in the European market. This translates into over 2800 daily delayed U.S flights and 6000 flights in Europe (Santos et al., 2017). Therefore, there has been adrift in the literature of airline disruption management to try and assimilate the management of several resources including the passengers, crew, and the aircraft. Though the task itself is challenging, the main objective is to minimize the operational costs, recovery cost due to disruption, and reduction of passenger delays (Sternberg et al., 2017). Essentially, flight cancelling, re-timing, swapping, and making requests for the usage of surplus ferrying may serve well to deter aircraft delays.

Factors Affecting Capacity and Delay

An airport capacity is not constant with time, but varies considerably through the year or day due to related operational and physical factors. Airspace and airfield geometry, weather, air traffic procedures, and traffic mix are some of the factors causing the capacity variance (Petersen, 2018). A figure allocated to the airfield capacity represents an average which is either based on experience of operating or a presumed array of conditions. The variability is more detrimental to the operation as compared to the average value (Petersen, 2018). The strategies for a successful management may include developing ways of compensating for the factors which prompt delay, or focusing on lowering the capacity.

Airfield Characteristics

The layout, along with the physical characteristics of taxiways, run-ways, and aprons greatly determine the capability of accommodating various aircrafts and the rates they can handle. The problem of delay prediction is treated from different views, including delay propagation, cancellation, and root delay (Sternberg et al., 2017). The equipment type installed is also a determinant, though the capacity remains constant for a given alignment of taxiways and runways which are in use.

Airspace Characteristics

Relative to the nearby airfields, features, and natural obstacles, the condition of an airport influences the pathways through the flight exclusion zone considered for use to and from the airstrip. The geometry of the airspace is constant over time, but whenever the airstrips are two or more in close vicinity, operations in one can considerably interfere with those in the other. The rate of acceptance of either of the airstrips may suffer or may require an aeroplane to fly circuitous routes to prevent conflict (Petersen, 2018). The interdependence of departure and approach routes can push one airport to hold departures till arrivals in the nearby aircraft clear the airspace.

Air Traffic Control (ATC)

Flight safety is assured by the rules of air traffic control, and they are the main determinants of airport delay and capacity. The procedures which govern runway occupancy, use of converging or parallel runways, aircraft separation, and departures and arrival spacing can induce delays between subsequent operations. ATC rules impact capacity and delay, especially in cases where there is simultaneous use of two or more runways, or when arrival streams combine on a final approach pathway (Petersen, 2018). An example is the procedure on noise-abatement which affects delay, as it is a kind of restriction on airstrips over areas said to be noise sensitive.

Meteorological Conditions

During clear weather, airport capacity is highest because visibility is at its finest. However, extremes of weather such as strong winds, fog, precipitation, and snow accumulation on the runway reduce the capacity (Rodríguez-Sanz et al., 2021). A common incident such as wind shift disrupts operations, but traffic is redirected to another pattern. In case the new pattern is not optimal, capacity decreases as much as the wind prevails. Indeed, the combined influence of runway configuration, weather, and ATC rules causes severe capacity loss and delays in many airports.

Conclusion

Airport delay is epitomised by the difference between scheduled arrival and departure times and is caused by lack of capacity. Apart from increasing operational costs, flight delays hurt airlines, passengers, and the management airports as well. It is important to predict the occurrence in the decision making process and consider the factors that induce the delay. In any case, airports are a part of a country’s system and economy and must therefore operate successfully.

References

Petersen, R. (2018). Capacity constraints for air traffic flow development. Web.

Rodríguez-Sanz, Á., Cano, J., & Fernández, B. R. (2021). Impact of Weather Conditions on Airport Arrival Delay and Throughput. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 1024, No. 1, p. 012107). IOP Publishing.

Santos, B. F., Wormer, M. M., Achola, T. A., & Curran, R. (2017). Airline delay management problem with airport capacity constraints and priority decisions. Journal of Air Transport Management, 63, 34-44.

Sternberg, A., Soares, J., Carvalho, D., & Ogasawara, E. (2017). A review on flight delay prediction.arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.06118. Web.

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