A Passenger-Centric Model for Reducing Missed Connections at Low Cost Airports With Gates Reassignment

Hasnain Ali,Michael Schultz,Sameer Alam,Yash Guleria

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2953769

Hasnain Ali, Michael Schultz + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2953769

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Abstract

Low cost carriers usually operate from no-frills budget terminals which are designed for quick aircraft turnaround, faster passenger connections with minimal inter-gate passenger transfer times. Such operations are highly sensitive to factors such as aircraft delays, turnaround time and flight connection time and may lead to missed connections for self-connecting transfer passengers. In this paper, we propose a passenger-centric model to analyze the effect of turnaround times, minimum connection times and stochastic delays on missed connections of self-connecting passengers. We use Singapore Changi International Airport Terminal 4, which mainly caters to budget/low cost carriers, as a case study to demonstrate the impact of operational uncertainties on these passenger connections, considering an optimal gate assignment by using heuristic search for scheduled arrivals. The proposed model also incorporates reassignment of gates in the disrupted scenario to minimize spatial deviation from the optimized gate assignments. Results show that the chances of missed connections can be significantly reduced by operationally maintaining higher turnaround time and minimum connection time and by bringing down delays at the airport. Specifically, by maintaining the flight turnaround time at 50 min, minimum connection time at 60 min and by containing arrival delays within 70% of the current delay spread at Terminal 4, transfer passenger missed connections can be prevented for almost all the flights. The gate assignment method adopted in this study is generic and may help to identify the gates, which are more prone to missed connections given operational uncertainties under different flight scenarios.

Highlights

According to the International Air Transport Association’s forecasts, global passenger traffic will proliferate at 3.5% compound annual growth rate, leading to a doubling in passenger numbers from today’s levels to 8.2 billion by 2037 [1]
Further airport operations are designed to cater to the transfer needs of self-connecting transfer passengers in order to tap into the burgeoning low cost carriers (LCC) market
SCOPE AND INTENT OF STUDY In this research we propose a passenger-centric model to analyze the missed connections due to arrival delays, tighter turnaround times (TAT) and minimum connection time (MCT) in a gate optimized scenario at a terminal that serves low cost carriers

Summary

Introduction

According to the International Air Transport Association’s forecasts, global passenger traffic will proliferate at 3.5% compound annual growth rate, leading to a doubling in passenger numbers from today’s levels to 8.2 billion by 2037 [1]. If not carefully planned for, the expected traffic growth shall strain the existing infrastructure, and lower the quality of passenger service This geographical restructuring of world air traffic can only be sustained by better utilizing infrastructure bottlenecks and moving away from flight-centric, unimodal travel options towards passenger-centric, multimodal operations at airports. Terminal 4 offers services such as self-service check-in and automated bag drop among others under the concept called ‘Fast and Seamless Travel’(FAST) at Changi [8] These efficient passenger processing services benefit transfer passengers immensely who airports (spokes) feed passengers into a central hub airport, the point-to-point network model (refer figure 3b) consists of individual routes connecting origin and destination pair in the airline’s network.

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