Investigating the effect on departure capacity of changing Target Off-Block Time uncertainty

With its 500.000 flights per year, Schiphol Airport is one of the busiest airports in Europe. Efficient runway use is vital for a smooth day-to-day operation. This paper investigates the new runway scheduler at Schiphol Airport, also referred to as the Departure Manager (DMAN). The new DMAN is built for a better utilisation of the outbound...

Investigating the effect on ATFM delays of changing the T-DPI-s horizon for regulated flights

As aviation recovers to pre-pandemic levels large amounts of Air Traffic Flow Management delay also return, as the traffic at airports and in airspaces reaches their old levels. These delays have a yearly cost of around 500 million euros in the European Civil Aviation Conference area and are detrimental to the experience of passengers. This...

Enhancing Baggage Handling Operations at Hub Airports through Sequential Forecasting and Resource Allocation: A Gradient Boosting Approach with MILP Optimisation

Baggage handling operations in airports have become substantially more challenging due to the surge in air transportation demand witnessed in the last three decades combined with an even higher pressure on the operations following the COVID-19 pandemic. The intricate nature of checked baggage requirements, impacting resource allocation and...

A Delay Analysis in Airport Engine-off Towing Operations Using Hierarchical Multi-Agent Path Planning

The increased pressure to reduce aircraft emissions and the growing demand for air travel causes airports to consider alternatives for fuel-inefficient aircraft taxiing. External towing tugs can be deployed to effectively reduce on-ground fuel burn of outbound aircraft. These new operations are likely to aggravate ground delays as a result of...

Assessment of the low visibility predictions at Schiphol Airport: Performance of the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast Guidance

Airport operations are highly dependent on safe weather conditions for their daily operations. Especially the visibility conditions are crucial. Low Visibility Procedures (LVP phase M, A, B and C) are defined at Schiphol Airport, resulting in capacity and runway use restrictions. These Low Visibility Pro­cedures are based on a post­processing...

Agent-based Modelling and Simulation of Airport Terminal Operations under COVID-19-related Restrictions

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the aviation industry, with a reduction in passenger demand never seen before. To minimise the spread of the virus and to gain trust from the public in the airport operations' safety, airports implemented measures, e.g., physical distancing, entry/exit temperature screening and more....

A Machine Learning Model for Normal and Extended Taxi-Out Time Prediction: Vienna Airport Case Study

All major airport operators face a similar challenge, namely ensuring maximum throughput and maintaining high runway utilisation. A key part of this is accurately planning aircraft movements on the ground to avoid queueing and associated delays. A primary indicator of the operator performance in this area is the Taxi-Out Time. The research...

Agent-Based Distributed Planning and Coordination for Resilient Airport Surface Movement Operations

Airport surface movement operations are complex systems that experience many types of adverse events which require resilient, safe and efficient responses. One regularly occurring adverse event is that of runway reconfigurations. Agent based distributed planning and coordination has shown promising results in controlling and maintaining...

Agent-Based Modelling of an Airport’s Ground Surface Movement Operation: Understanding the principles and mechanisms of decentralised control

Decentralised air traffic control shifts decision making to a local level, allowing decentralised controllers to focus on solving local conflicts. Since decentralised controllers have accurate local information at their disposal, they can adapt quicker and more efficiently to changing conditions. Consequently, it is suggested that the dynamics...

Modelling and analysis of dynamic relations and trade-offs between security and efficiency in airport security operations

The two performance areas “security” and “efficiency” in airport security operations cannot be analyzed apart from each other, since influencing one has a large impact on the other. In this research agent-based modelling is used to analyze dynamic relations and trade-offs between security and efficiency within airport security operations....

Trade-off Analysis between Security and Efficiency of Airport Operations: A methodological underpinned modelling approach to identify, analyse and evaluate trade-offs based on empirical choice observations

This Master Thesis document presents a research on trade-off analysis between security and efficiency factors during airport operations. Over the past few decades there has been an increase in security in the air transportation industry, with even more measures taken since 9/11. Besides affecting the operational costs of airports, the stricter...