Airport capacity impact of new aircraft concepts: how to manage airport diversity and individuality

Abstract

Due to the worldwide increasing air traffic demand being challenged by restricted airport capacities, the future aircraft designs and operational concepts need to be evaluated regarding their general impact on airport capacity already at the concept stage within the design process. Looking at different airport situations worldwide, however, reveals a high individuality and variety in airport infrastructure and air traffic structures suggesting that any kind of capacity assessment may only be valid for one specific airport and that the provision of general results requires careful consideration of all influencing factors. This paper's objective is to initially introduce new applications of established methods in the fields of parameter clustering and scenario analysis, thus making them available to define operational cases for airport capacity impact assessments of new aircraft concepts. Clustering methods are used to integrate all factors relevant for assessing aircraft's and procedures' impact on airport capacity such that meaningful general results can be achieved limiting the effort required despite the big variety and individuality of airports worldwide. Scenario techniques are outlined that can complement the approach in order to additionally address uncertainties in the operational airport environment within the timeframe beyond the new aircraft concept's potential entry into service. A proof of concept study is provided to show the general possibilities of application for the proposed approach.

Traffic Related Representative Airport Categories for Technology Impact Evaluation

“…However, in this paper only relative traffic-related characteristics are considered, not taking into account infrastructure features. This decoupled assessment was also proposed by Böck et al (2011). Nevertheless, an analysis of relevant infrastructure layouts on a global level is important for capacity analysis, but is independent of the findings in this work.…”