Functional Relationship between the Runway System and Apron/Gate Area under Different Demand Characteristics

Abstract

Overall airport airside capacity is commonly identified with the runway system capacity. In this paper, it is observed through the runway system and apron/gate area, assuming that the taxiway system does not impose the capacity constraint. The main issue addressed in this paper is whether overall airside capacity can be determined by comparing the runway system capacity to apron capacity directly one to another or their functional relationship has to be understood and taken into account?Simple transformation from operations/h into aircraft/h considering the share of arrivals and departures in peak periods may not be sufficient to capture the connection between apron/gate and runway capacities for different airport types. Runway-apron relationship can also depend on demand characteristics e.g. dominant market segments (e.g. scheduled, charter, low-cost, general aviation, cargo), or specific traffic patterns (hubbing or point-to-point services, seasonality in demand, etc.).This paper primarily focuses on two airport types, with respect to their role in air transport network: origin-destination airports, serving primarily point-to-point traffic, resulting in traffic distribution throughout the day with more or less pronounced peak periods; and hub airports, serving temporally coordinated flights concentrated in waves of flights (solely, or in combination with other point-to-point flights). In the latter case, two different strategies for aircraft stands/gates assignment are observed: exclusive and preferential.Referring to earlier findings related to apron capacity analysis, the paper summarizes various factors that can affect apron capacity at O/D and hub airports. Simple academic examples are used to show when the capacities of the runway system and apron/gate area can be determined independently of each other, and under which demand characteristics runway-apron relationship should be taken into consideration in the process of airside capacity analysis.