Aircraft Size Research Articles

Air Traffic Performance by Market Segments

How is air traffic performance affected by type and location of markets? Is there any pattern to how air traffic performs with respect to the size and structure of markets, type of networks, and size of aircraft? In this paper, an empirical framework has been developed to examine the determinants of air traffic performance. Air traffic performance is defined as the ratio of airborne time to total ramp-to-ramp time. Using quarterly segment traffic data (i.e., T100 segment of Form 41) for the period 1995-2006, an econometric model is constructed to estimate and evaluate performance measures defined over market segments and networks. This econometric framework establishes and evaluates empirical linkages between performance measures and size of the markets, locations, distance, seasons of the year, and aircraft type over time. Statistical estimates indicate that size of market, type of aircraft, industry structure, and distance play important roles in influencing performance measures.

Comparative Analysis of Domestic Passenger Flight Frequency between Japan and US Aviation Market

Due to the capacity constraint of Haneda Airport, airlines in Japan have to rely on large-size aircrafts to increase capacity for transporting increasing volume passenger in domestic aviation. Consequently the average aircraft-size has been unusually large in Japanese domestic market in comparison with the other western countries. This means that level of service in terms of the flight frequency is low in many air routes in Japan. In this study, first, we broadly compare the flight frequency and aircraft size among major countries. Second, in order to get an idea on the potential flight frequency, we analyze the flight frequency in US and Japan from taking into account the characteristics of each air route such as passenger demand, route distance and number of airline entries. The study results, though based on simple quantitative analysis, provide valuable insights for policy makers concerning future strategies in expanding capacity of Haneda Airport.

Airline emission charges: Effects on airfares, service quality, and aircraft design

This paper explores the effect of airline emissions charges on airfares, airline service quality, aircraft design features, and network structure, using a detailed and realistic theoretical model of competing duopoly airlines. These impacts are derived by analyzing the effects of an increase in the effective price of fuel, which is the path by which emissions charges will alter airline choices. The results show that emission charges will raise fares, reduce flight frequency, increase load factors, and raise aircraft fuel efficiency, while having no effect on aircraft size. Given that these adjustments occur in response to the treatment of an emissions externality that is currently unaddressed, they represent efficient changes that move society closer to a social optimum.

On the factors that affect airline flight frequency and aircraft size

This paper assesses the determinants of aircraft size and frequency of flights on US airline routes by considering market demographics, airport characteristics, airline characteristics and route characteristics. It shows that frequency and aircraft size increase with population, income, and runway length. An increase in the proportion of managerial workers in the labor force or the proportion of population below the age of 25 results in greater frequency with the use of small planes. Slot constrained airports and an increase in the number of nearby airports lead to lower flight frequency with the use of smaller planes. Hubs and low cost carriers are associated with larger plane sizes and higher frequency, while regional airline ownership leads to higher frequency and the use of smaller planes. An increase in distance between the endpoints leads to lower frequency with the use of larger planes. As airport delay rises, airlines reduce frequency and use smaller planes, though when airport cancellations rise, flight frequency increases with the use of larger planes.

Is liquid hydrogen a solution for mitigating air pollution by airports?

This paper investigates the potential of LH 2 (Liquid Hydrogen) as an alternative fuel for achieving more sustainable long-term development of large airports in terms of mitigating their air pollution. For such purpose, a methodology for quantifying the potential of LH 2 is developed. It consists of two models: the first model enables the estimation of the fuel demand and the specification of the fuel production and storage capacity needed to satisfy that demand at a given airport under given conditions; the other model enables assessment of the effects of introducing LH 2 on mitigating air pollution at that airport. The main inputs for the methodology are scenarios of the long-term growth of air traffic demand at the airport in terms of the annual number of ATM (Air Transport Movements), i.e. flights and related LTO (Landing and Take-Off) cycles and their time characteristics, the aircraft fleet mix, characterized by the aircraft size and proportions of conventional and cryogenic aircraft, the fuel consumption per particular categories of aircraft/flights; and specifically, the fuel consumption and related emission rates of particular air pollutants by these aircraft during LTO cycles. The output from the methodology includes an estimation of the long-term development of demand at a given airport in terms of the volume and structure of ATM, which depend on: the scenarios of traffic growth and introduction of cryogenic aircraft, the required production and storage capacity of particular fuel types, the fuel consumed, and the quantities of related air pollutants emitted during LTO cycles carried out during the period concerned. The airport planners and policy makers can use the methodology for estimating, planning, design, and managing the fuel production and storage capacity, as well as for setting a cap on the air pollution depending of the circumstances.

Aircraft Traffic Analysis for Forecasting

Analysis of historical air traffic is used to determine trends that will assist in traffic forecasting. This process begins with externally supplied forecasts that use econometrics as a base to produce passengers and movements as an output, which is then refined through the results of traffic analysis. The paper begins by defining the service charge structure for Nav Canada and defines two main service charges, one related to departures from Canadian airports and one related to the distance traveled by these flights. From the defined markets, domestic, transborder, south, Atlantic, and Pacific monthly growth rates are examined for potential trends. Although frequency may be a primary driver underlying much of the growth, the service charge structure includes the components of aircraft size (weight) and distance, factors that are not included in external forecasts. The paper presents the growth rates of all three components (frequency, aircraft size, and distance) within these markets to identify potential areas for further analysis and then examines the domestic market in more detail to determine the causes of traffic changes and their impact on a forecast on a month-by-month basis. This analysis also reveals further questions and identifies the need for additional analytical techniques.

Development of an Advanced Rotorcraft Preliminary Design Framework

Various modules are generally combined with one another in order to perform rotorcraft preliminary design and its optimization. At the stage of the preliminary design, analysis fidelity is less important than the rapid assessment of a design is. Most of the previous researchers attempted to implement sophisticated applications in order to increase the fidelity of analysis, but the present paper focuses on a rapid assessment while keeping the similar level of fidelity. Each small-sized module will be controlled by an externally-operated global optimization module. Results from each module are automatically handled from one discipline to another which reduces the amount of computational effort and time greatly when compared with manual execution. Automatically handled process decreases computational cycle and time by factor of approximately two. Previous researchers and the rotorcraft industries developed their own integrated analysis for rotorcraft design task, such as HESCOMP, VASCOMP, and RWSIZE. When a specific mission profile is given to these programs, those will estimate the aircraft size, performance, rotor performance, component weight, and other aspects. Such results can become good sources for the supplemental analysis in terms of stability, handling qualities, and cost. If the results do not satisfy the stability criteria or other constraints, additional sizing processes may be used to re-evaluate rotorcraft size based on the result from stability analysis. Trade-off study can be conducted by connecting disciplines, and it is an important advantage in a preliminary design study. In this paper among the existing rotorcraft design programs, an adequate program is selected for a baseline of the design framework, and modularization strategy will be applied and further improvements for each module be pursued.

Congested hubs

Hub congestion is a major concern and a relevant policy issue because it causes important problems at airports such as flight delays, cancellations and missed connections that end up affecting both air travelers and airlines. We address the interplay between flight frequency and aircraft size in a congestion-pricing model, finding that airlines schedule too many flights using overly small aircraft, which constitutes a major contributor to congestion. Then we work out the needed congestion tolls, which account for the congestion imposed on other carriers and the congestion imposed on all passengers. Finally, we analyze the effects on congestion of network size, airport capacity, alliances and competition in layover time.

Airline strategies for aircraft size and airline frequency with changing demand and competition: A simultaneous-equations approach for traffic on the north Atlantic

Airport planners need to know the forecast demand on the facilities provided airside at airports. For this they need to know how airlines will deal with traffic in terms of the size of aircraft and frequency of service. In response to increasing demand, airlines may increase capacity by increasing the frequency of flights or they may choose to increase aircraft size. This may yield operating cost economies. If the airports they operate from are capacity constrained they will be limited in the extent that they can change frequency that will limit their ability to compete with the number of frequencies offered. Consequently, these airports are excluded as are major hubs as frequencies will be influenced by connecting passengers. Routes are identified on the north Atlantic that can be analysed and conclusions are suggested on the basis of three stage least-squares estimates for pooled time series-cross section data. An increase in passengers on the whole will result in a larger increase in frequency than in aircraft size but the impact of competition does not yield significant results due to the strategy of excluding certain categories of airport.

The environmental implications of airlines' choice of aircraft size

One of the main outcomes of open skies policies is the importance of service frequency in the competition between airlines. To keep load factors high while offering high frequency service, airlines tend to reduce the size of the aircraft used. On short-haul routes this phenomenon is even more apparent, especially on routes between hub airports, even though these routes and airports are often congested. This choice of service frequency and aircraft size must have important environmental consequences that this paper aims to evaluate and quantify. The analysis considers local air pollution, climate change and noise impacts and aims to evaluate whether the competitive environment that drives airlines to offer high frequency service carries an environmental penalty. The analysis showed that increasing aircraft size and adjusting the service frequency to offer similar seating capacity will increase local pollution but decrease climate change impact and noise pollution. When local pollution and climate change impacts are monetized and aggregated the analysis showed that environmental benefits will result from increasing aircraft size. But these benefits, in monetary terms, were found to be relatively small and sensitive to the assumptions made.

Is it the labor unions’ fault? Dissecting the causes of the impaired technical efficiencies of the legacy carriers in the United States

Data envelopment analysis is used to evaluate the technical efficiencies of a number of major passenger airlines in the United States at transforming their inputs (labor, fuel and fleet-wide seating capacity) into available seat-miles. A tobit regression model is then used to identify the underlying drivers of airline efficiency, as measured by the data envelopment analysis efficiency score. The impact of unionization on airline efficiency is found to be statistically insignificant, controlling for the influences of other hypothesized determinants of airline efficiency: the average age of an airline’s fleet, the average size of its aircraft, its average stage length, the extent to which the airline relies of hubbing within its route structure, the percent of its passenger enplanements that are international, and whether the airline is a legacy carrier. The statistically significant drivers of airline efficiency, at a ten percent level of significance, are average aircraft size, average stage length and the extent to which the airline relies on hubbing and connecting flights within its route structure. The stage length variable is not significant at a five percent level of significance, however. An increase in average aircraft size or in average stage length enhances an airline’s efficiency whereas an increase in hubbing reduces it.

Crash Rates of Scheduled Commuter and Air Carrier Flights Before and After a Regulatory Change

In 1997, in an effort to reduce the crash rate of scheduled commuter flights, the FAA required aircraft with 10-30 passenger seats to operate under stricter rules. Training and other requirements of 14 CFR Part 121 rules were applied to these midsize commuters, which previously had operated under the less strict Part 135 rules. Published crash rates obscured changes related to aircraft size. This research was undertaken to determine whether the rule change affected crash rates of aircraft with 10-30 passenger seats. We determined the number of passenger seats on each Part 135 or Part 121 aircraft that crashed between 1983 and 2007. For aircraft with < 10, 10-30, and > 30 seats, we estimated the numbers of departures and crash rates, adjusting for changes in total departures and numbers of in-service aircraft. The Part 135 crash rate tripled in 1997 when commuters with 10-30 seats were excluded, reflecting the administrative change. However, the crash rate of aircraft with 10-30 passenger seats began to decline 4 yr before the rule change; thereafter, their rate was lower than for larger aircraft. The fleet size of aircraft with 10-30 passenger seats increased from 1983 to 1997, then declined as they were replaced with larger aircraft in response to the rule change. No effect of the rule change on crash rates of 10-30-seat aircraft was apparent. The decline in their crash rates began before the rule change and may have been related to the 1992 requirement for ground proximity warning devices.

Airline’s choice of aircraft size – Explanations and implications

When facing a growth in demand, airlines tend to respond more by means of increasing frequencies than by increasing aircraft size. At many of the world’s largest airports there are fewer than 100 passengers per air transport movement, although congestion and delays are growing. Furthermore, demand for air transport is predicted to continue growing but aircraft size is not. This paper aims to investigate and explain this phenomenon, the choice of relatively small aircraft. It seems that this choice is associated mainly with the benefits of high frequency service, the competitive environment in which airlines operate and the way airport capacity is allocated and priced. Regression analysis of over 500 routes in the US, Europe and Asia provides empirical evidence that the choice of aircraft size is mainly influenced by route characteristics (e.g. distance, level of demand and level of competition) and almost not at all by airport characteristics (e.g. number of runways and whether the airport is a hub or slot coordinated). We discuss the implications of this choice of aircraft size and suggest that some market imperfections exist in the airline industry leading airlines to offer excessive frequency on some routes and too low frequency on others.

Airline Emission Charges: Effects on Airfares, Service Quality, and Aircraft Design

This paper investigates the effect of airline emissions charges on airline service quality, airfares, aircraft design features, and network structure, using a realistic and detailed theoretical model of competing duopoly airlines. These impacts are derived by analyzing the effects of an increase in the effective price of fuel, which is the path by which emissions charges will alter airline choices. The results show that emission charges will raise fares, reduce flight frequency, increase load factors, and raise aircraft fuel efficiency, while having no effect on aircraft size. Given that these adjustments occur in response to the treatment of an emissions externality that is currently unaddressed, they represent efficient changes that move society closer to a social optimum.

Hub Dominance and Runway Capacity Constraint in Air Cargo Transport Markets: Model Analysis

paper discusses the theoretical framework for considering network design and choice of aircraft size in order to understand the hub dominance in the air cargo transport markets. The model is a bi-level market model that is constructed by air carriers' behavior as leader, and shippers' behavior as follower. We assume the duopoly market in which air carriers aim to maximize their profit by designing shipping network. Shippers aim to reduce their generalized shipping cost which consists of shipping time, waiting time, tariff and monetary value of congestion. We assume that the equilibrium flow of commodities is given as stochastic user equilibrium flow. Computation results suggest that the carrier which holds the dominant hub airport rules the market but the hub dominance is unstable. Hub dominance heavily depends on the balance between runway capacity and local cargo flows.

Determinants of de novo new entrant survival in the liberalized intra-European scheduled passenger airline industry

This paper analyzes semi-parametrically the survival odds of de novo entrants in the liberalized intra-European scheduled passenger airline industry with respect to three sets of determinants: strategic positioning, inaugural market entry and network economics. Among these determinants, a ‘low-cost’ strategic position does not confer survival benefits to new entrants. Entering markets with different levels of prior concentrations – which economists traditionally relate to different pricing powers – does not significantly affect the survival odds of new entrants. Entering mid-sized markets adversely affects entrant survival, while entering large, small or new markets at inception does not noticeably impact entrant survival. Network economics that corresponds to low operating costs (aircraft size) is a consistent contributor to entrant survival. In addition, new entrants based in France or Ireland are less likely to survive than others, reflecting the strong negative impact of intermodal competition and a strong, entrenched entrant.

The potential for European aviation CO 2 emissions reduction through the use of larger jet aircraft

There is increasing pressure to reduce global CO 2 emissions, with aviation targeted as an industry with high future expected growth and limited potential for reduced emissions. In Europe, air transport is likely to be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme from 2012, allowing open trading with other sectors. The proposed scheme may be economically efficient but will it do much towards curbing aviation emissions? A number of papers have looked at the ETS impact on air traffic growth rates, and others have forecast the rate of likely future fuel efficiency gains. This paper examines the potential for greater fuel efficiency through the use of larger aircraft and different patterns of operation. Fuel efficiency was found to be related to aircraft size with more benefit from trading up with short/medium-haul than with long-haul aircraft. This relationship only held for long-haul aircraft if those aircraft with two main decks were removed from the sample (these types showing inherently lower fuel efficiency). Combining these findings with manufacturers' and other forecasts of average aircraft size suggests that less than 1% a year of fuel efficiency gains will be available from this source over the next 20 years.

Network Structure and Design in the Deregulated U.S. Airline Industry: An Argument for Re-Regulation?

This paper develops a model to explain and analyze the evolution of network structure (connectivity) and design (flight frequency, aircraft size, prices) in the post-deregulation U.S. airline industry. We show that legacy carriers choice of Hub-and-Spoke networks and the emergence of low cost carriers (LCCs) operating Point-to-Point networks were optimal choices. We demonstrate that LCCs need not necessarily charge lower prices, and their entry impacted legacy carriers' prices in all markets, even those where there is no direct competition. We show that in response to entry, legacy carriers optimally lower flight frequency, leading to longer wait times between flights for which passengers are compensated by lower prices; conversely, if the entrant later exits, legacy carriers raise flight frequency and therefore prices, which may erroneously appear to be predatory pricing when in fact it is the consequence of optimal network redesign. Finally, we demonstrate that even though low cost carriers lower prices, total social welfare with competing network structures can also be lowered. In other words, the poor financial performance of legacy carriers is not due to their inefficiency per se but due to an efficient Hub-and-Spoke network undermined by competition from inefficient Point-to-Point networks. We argue that social welfare may have been, and still can be, higher if entry and exit in air passenger travel industry is regulated.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Externally Blown Flap Configuration for Transport Aircraft

As aircraft grow in size to meet the ever-increasing demand from the international traveling public, the limits imposed by current airport facilities become apparent. Continual growth of environmental awareness within the community and noise reduction requirements, combined with the issue of long takeoff and landing runs required by the large jet transport aircraft, create problems for engineers. The implementation of externally blown flaps would allow for steeper approach paths pertaining to a reduction in noise pollution and reduce the takeoff and landing distance required. The reduction in the distance required for aircraft operations will allow for an increase in the size of aircraft or operations from fields that were previously unavailable. The introduction of externally blown flaps has occurred on a production aircraft, the C-17 Globemaster III, in use with the United States Air Force. The advantages provided by the system are obvious, improving the aircraft’s takeoff and landing performance dramatically. This study focuses on a computational fluid dynamics analysis of the three-dimensional flow characteristics of the externally blown flaps configuration for transport aircraft and future unmanned aerial vehicles operating in remote areas. The study compares two- and three-dimensional analysis with and without externally blown flaps, increasing understanding of the vital elements of the system so as to allow the possibility of further implementation of externally blown flaps in improving the airline industry in regard to airway congestion.

RF-ID tag and video passenger location in airports

In recent years, airport security has become a critical issue in the eyes of the general public, security services and politicians alike. Over a similar period, the growing volume of flights, size of aircraft and the need, in major airports, to move a large number of people through a complex environment as efficiently and safely as possible is becoming an increasingly challenging task. With this in mind, the EU-funded Optag project was launched in 2004, to study the feasibility of a combined RF-ID tag passenger location and video surveillance system to enhance airport efficiency, safety and security.