Atlanta Airport Research Articles

Supply chain optimization of sustainable aviation fuel from carinata in the Southeastern United States

Carinata is a purpose-grown oilseed feedstock for renewable fuels, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that can replace conventional aviation fuel (CAF). Given carinata is a new crop in the Southeastern United States, it is crucial to analyze its sustainability from a supply chain perspective. This study developed a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and simulated it for 20 years, starting from a farm (county-level data) and ending at the airport. About 2.06 million ha in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia combined were found suitable for carinata production. Given the three-year rotation period, about 0.69 million hectares can be cultivated annually, approximately 65% of which was in Georgia. About 2.4% of the combined SAF annual demand of four major airports (about 210 thousand t) in the study area is satisfied at that level of carinata cultivation. However, all available SAF was supplied to the Atlanta airport as this decision minimizes the supply chain cost. A total of 1343 storage units, one oil extraction mill, and one biorefinery were needed to meet the overall demand. We found that SW Georgia is the top supplier of carinata seeds. The unit cost of production and carbon intensity were estimated to be $0.89 L-1 (or $26.79 GJ−1) and 0.91 kg CO2e L−1 (or 27.28 kg CO2e GJ−1), respectively. This carbon intensity of carinata-based SAF was 67.8% lower than that of CAF. With variations included in SAF demand, yield, and soil carbon sequestration, carbon savings remained between 66.5% and 67.8%. Given the GHG advantage of SAF over CAF, there is justification for subsidies required to make SAF competitive.

Data-Driven Robust Aircraft Assignment to Minimize Delay Propagation

Flight delays have a significant impact on an airline's operating cost including increased expenses for crew, fuel, and maintenance. Propagated delays due to late arriving aircraft contribute to 40% of all flight delays as reported by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The robust aircraft assignment problem is to assign tail numbers on scheduled arriving flights at an airport to scheduled departing flights at the same airport with the objective of minimizing propagated delays. In this paper, we propose a new data-driven approach for the robust aircraft assignment problem by formulating it as a balanced assignment problem between incoming and outgoing flights flown by the same aircraft type at a single airport. We consider both deterministic and stochastic versions of the aircraft assignment problem. In the deterministic case, we prove the optimality of the First-in-First-out (FIFO) assignment policy under two different performance measures, justifying the use of the FIFO policy as a benchmark. In the stochastic case, we show that the FIFO assignment policy is no longer optimal and propose the rFIFO and stochastic assignment formulations based on the mean and empirical distribution of arrival delay, respectively. We propose a data-driven approach to estimate the assignment costs by using empirical observations of arrival delays from prior years' flight records to compute the empirical propagated delay distribution. We propose a data-driven clustering method to account for factors such as originating airport, time of day, and aircraft type that affect the arrival delay distribution. These empirical cluster based aircraft assignment costs serve as an input to our stochastic assignment model. These assignment costs are then used to derive the optimal aircraft assignment for the rFIFO and stochastic assignment policies for an out of sample data set from 2018 for Delta at Atlanta airport. We show that both the rFIFO and stochastic assignment policies derived from the data-driven approach perform better than the benchmark FIFO assignment. We also show that for all Delta airline flights at Atlanta airport from July to September in 2018, the stochastic assignment policy yields a roughly 40% improvement in total actual propagated delay over the actual airline assignment while reducing the fraction of delayed flights due to propagated delays from 6.58% to 2.62%, thus potentially saving approximately 14 million dollars in flight delay related annual operating costs. We conclude that incorporating the stochastic nature of arrival delays in solving the robust aircraft assignment problem, and combining it with a data-driven approach can potentially help an airline significantly reduce its operating costs due to flight delays, improve passenger convenience and experience, and help the environment by reducing emissions.

On the feasibility of measuring physiologic and self-reported sleep disturbance by aircraft noise on a national scale: A pilot study around Atlanta airport

Aircraft noise can disturb sleep and impair recuperation. Research is needed to develop exposure-response relationships that are representative of noise-exposed communities and can be used to inform noise mitigation policy in the United States. For a national field study on physiologic response to aircraft noise during sleep to be feasible, an inexpensive yet sound study methodology is needed. In the pilot study presented here, the methodology of using electrocardiography and actigraphy to monitor sleep was implemented around Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL). The primary objective was to evaluate the quality and quantity of data that could be obtained with the following study approaches: recruiting participants by postal questionnaire, shipping them the physiologic and noise measurement equipment, and the unattended setup of the equipment and recording of data by the participants themselves. The secondary objective was to compare objective and subjective measures of sleep and health between groups exposed to different levels of nocturnal aircraft noise. We mailed 4080 questionnaires containing items on sleep, health and noise disturbance to residences around ATL that were exposed to at least 35 dB Lnight aircraft noise. From 407 questionnaire respondents, 34 participants completed five nights of unattended sleep measurements. Data of sufficient quality and quantity to investigate the effects of aircraft noise on sleep were obtained. Self-reported awakenings increased as a function of the highest maximum aircraft noise level occurring during the sleep period. Event-related physiologic awakenings increased as a function of the maximum noise level of individual aircraft noise events, although this effect was of only borderline statistical significance (p = 0.057) likely due to the low sample size of this pilot study. The approach used in the presented pilot study has been demonstrated to be feasible for the purpose of the larger-scale study among a representative population around multiple airports in the future.

Sustainable communities: The Atlanta Airport EcoDistrict

Sustainable practices in asset management are becoming new business requirements. This paper shows how an airport community consisting of the airport operator, airlines, concession operators and other organisations doing business at the airport have come together to work in concert to improve sustainability at the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. This community, the Airport EcoDistrict ATL Community, is illustrated by examining the development and operation of one of the committees of the EcoDistrict — the Utilities Committee. Through policy development, third party consultation and identification and development of other resources, the committee is empowering its members to develop and implement sustainable energy and water efficiency improvement measures.

Data Processing in Beijing Capital International Airport Regional Economic Impact Assessment and Overall Analysis

In this paper, the direct impact, indirect impact and induced impact are used to analysis the economic benefit of the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA). The representative airports, Atlanta Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport are selected to compare with the BCIA in the aspects of total impact and direct impact. Some foreign organizations regularly measure certain areas’ economic and social impact generated by the airports. BCIA is compared with a series of areas in Asia Pacific and the UK in several respects.

A plume-in-grid approach to characterize air quality impacts of aircraft emissions at the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport

Abstract. This study examined the impacts of aircraft emissions during the landing and takeoff cycle on PM2.5 concentrations during the months of June and July 2002 at the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Primary and secondary pollutants were modeled using the Advanced Modeling System for Transport, Emissions, Reactions, and Deposition of Atmospheric Matter (AMSTERDAM). AMSTERDAM is a modified version of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model that incorporates a plume-in-grid process to simulate emissions sources of interest at a finer scale than can be achieved using CMAQ's model grid. Three fundamental issues were investigated: the effects of aircraft on PM2.5 concentrations throughout northern Georgia, the differences resulting from use of AMSTERDAM's plume-in-grid process rather than a traditional CMAQ simulation, and the concentrations observed in aircraft plumes at subgrid scales. Comparison of model results with an air quality monitor located in the vicinity of the airport found that normalized mean bias ranges from −77.5% to 6.2% and normalized mean error ranges from 40.4% to 77.5%, varying by species. Aircraft influence average PM2.5 concentrations by up to 0.232 μg m−3 near the airport and by 0.001–0.007 μg m−3 throughout the Atlanta metro area. The plume-in-grid process increases concentrations of secondary PM pollutants by 0.005–0.020 μg m−3 (compared to the traditional grid-based treatment) but reduces the concentration of non-reactive primary PM pollutants by up to 0.010 μg m−3, with changes concentrated near the airport. Examination of subgrid-scale results indicates that median aircraft contribution to grid cells is higher than median puff concentration in the airport's grid cell and outside of a 20 km × 20 km square area centered on the airport, while in a 12 km × 12 km square ring centered on the airport, puffs have median concentrations over an order of magnitude higher than aircraft contribution to the grid cells. Maximum puff impacts are seen within the 12 km × 12 km ring, not in the airport's own grid cell, while maximum grid cell impacts occur within the airport's grid cell. Twenty-one (21)% of all aircraft-related puffs from the Atlanta airport have at least 0.1 μg m−3 PM2.5 concentrations. Near the airport, median daily puff concentrations vary between 0.017 and 0.134 μg m−3 (0.05 and 0.35 μg m−3 at ground level), while maximum daily puff concentrations vary between 6.1 and 42.1 μg m−3 (7.5 and 42.1 μg m−3 at ground level) during the 2-month period. In contrast, median daily aircraft contribution to grid concentrations varies between 0.015 and 0.091 μg m−3 (0.09 and 0.40 μg m−3 at ground level), while the maximum varies between 0.75 and 2.55 μg m−3 (0.75 and 2.0 μg m−3 at ground level). Future researchers may consider using a plume-in-grid process, such as the one used here, to understand the impacts of aircraft emissions at other airports, for proposed future airports, for airport expansion projects under various future scenarios, and for other national-scale studies specifically when the maximum impacts at fine scales are of interest.

Secondary organic aerosol produced from aircraft emissions at the Atlanta Airport: An advanced diagnostic investigation using process analysis

Efforts using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to investigate the impacts of aircraft emissions from the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport have previously shown aircraft emissions increased total daily PM2.5 concentrations by up to 9.4% (0.94 μg m−3) with overall impacts varying by modeled grid resolution. However, those results also indicated that secondary organic aerosol (SOA) concentrations in the airport grid cell were reduced due to aircraft emissions at coarser grid resolutions (36-km and 12-km) but not at a finer resolution (4-km). To investigate this anomaly, this study instruments the CMAQ model with process analysis, an advanced diagnostic modeling tool, and focuses on changes to SOA concentrations due to aircraft emissions in the grid cells containing the Atlanta airport at grid resolutions of 36-km, 12-km, and 4-km. Model results indicated aircraft emissions reduced hourly anthropogenic and biogenic SOA concentrations at the 36-km and 12-km grid resolutions by up to 6.2% (0.052 μg m−3) by removing nitrate, hydroxyl, and hydroperoxy radicals through chemistry. At the 4-km resolution, however, hourly modeled SOA concentrations increased (primarily due to changes in biogenic SOA) by up to 11.5% (0.081 μg m−3) due to primary organic aerosol emissions from aircraft, with the additional organic mass shifting partitioning of SOA semi-volatile gas phase species into the particle phase.

Apron layout design and flight-to-gate assignment at Lanseria International airport

Air traffic is continuously increasing and more efficient air transport systems are required to handle the air travel demand. The study investigates the expansion of Lanseria International Airport in Gauteng, South Africa. Expansion of Lanseria requires a study of the airport apron layout to ensure efficient passenger-aircraft flow as well as the efficient flow of aircraft to and from the airport. The candidate layout designs are based on the layout concept of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, USA. In the study, different airport apron layouts were compared, including the existing layout of Atlanta Airport, via a simulation model of each. Designs based mainly on passenger transfer distance between the terminal building and aircraft were evaluated. The cross-entropy method was used to develop a generic flight-to-gate assignment program that minimises passenger transfer distances.

Earl Mann Beats the Klan: Jackie Robinson and the First Integrated Games in Atlanta

At 1:30 p.m. on April 8, 1949, Earl Mann, the president of the Atlanta Crackers of the Class AA Southern Association, had his regular monthly meeting with Hughes Spalding, the chairman of the Crackers' board of directors. Spalding did not record in his desk diary what he and Mann discussed, but surely a major topic of their conversation was the game scheduled for that evening at venerable Ponce de Leon Park. (1) The game pitted the all-white Crackers against the integrated Brooklyn Dodgers, with their two black players, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. The Dodgers-Crackers contest would be the first mixed-race baseball game in Atlanta and the first in a major city of the Deep THE SETTING: ATLANTA IN 1949 In 1941 Atlanta was known for a soft drink, Coca-Cola, and a novel about the Lost Cause made into a movie, Gone With the Wind. World War II changed that image and transformed Atlanta from an overgrown village into a bustling major city. The war stimulated explosive economic and population growth that continued throughout the decade. The federal government made Atlanta the military supply center for the Southeast and the area headquarters for all military personnel stationed in the region. The war effort pumped millions of dollars into the local economy, and thousands of servicemen passed through the city. Atlanta also became the regional seat for more than fifty government agencies, so many that the city became known as the Little Washington of the South. In September 1943 the huge Bell Bomber plant began operations in nearby Marietta, Georgia. It employed between thirty thousand and forty thousand workers and had a weekly payroll of $1.5 million. Shortly after the war, the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation built large plants on the outskirts of the city. These manufacturers employed tens of thousands of workers and had an economic impact in the tens of millions of dollars. Between 1945 and 1950 the number of factories in Atlanta increased by 75 percent, and many national corporations established branch offices in the city. Retail business thrived with net sales exceeding $500 million in 1947. Atlanta was the banking, communications, and transportation center of the region. The city was home to the Federal Reserve Bank for the region. Its telephone exchange was the largest in the South and the third largest in the world. Delta Air Lines, which moved to Atlanta in 1941 and began operating commercial flights connecting the cities of the South, built a $1 million hub in the city in 1947. In 1948 the Atlanta airport serviced more than five hundred thousand passengers, and during certain months of the year it was the busiest in the country. In the fall of 1948 construction began on a $40 million expressway system. At the same time, Atlanta became the site of the first southern television station, Welcome South Brother (WSB). The population of Atlanta rose from 302,288 in 1940 to 331,314 in 1950, while the population of the metro area increased from 518,100 to 664,033. Many soldiers who had trained in or visited Atlanta during the war settled there after their discharge from the military. By 1949 Atlanta had emerged as the undisputed capital of the (2) The war also had a tremendous impact on race relations in the city, and in the years immediately afterward, Atlanta experienced tumultuous racial upheaval. African American servicemen returning from the fight against fascism overseas demanded greater equality and democracy at home. They would not obsequiously return to the inferior status that society had previously assigned to them. Some whites resisted, resorting to violence to maintain the racial status quo of strict segregation and white supremacy. African Americans constituted slightly more than one-third of Atlanta's population. (3) They exerted their political power for the first time in decades in a special election in February 1946 when they provided the margin of victory to Helen Douglas Mankin, a liberal white woman, in her race for the US Congress. …

Depeaking Schedules

After deregulation, many U.S. airlines created hubs with banked schedules. However, in the past decade, these same airlines began to experiment with depeaking their schedules to reduce costs and to improve operational performance. Little research has investigated revenue shifts associated with depeaked schedules, yet an understanding of the tradeoffs between revenue, costs, and operational performance at a network level is critical before airlines will consider further depeaking and related strategies for managing congestion. This paper develops data-cleaning and data analysis methodologies that are based on publicly available data used to quantify airport- and network-level revenue changes associated with schedule depeaking. These methodologies are applied to a case study of Delta's depeaking at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Results show that this depeaking was associated with Delta's revenue increasing slower than that for the rest of the network and the industry as a whole but that the depeaking could have been profitable if costs had been cut to a sufficient degree. The Atlanta airport likely benefits from the increase in connection time. The methodologies developed in this paper can be extended to other depeaking cases to provide a comprehensive assessment of revenue shifts and to understand airport and network characteristics that are most conducive to schedule depeaking.

The Promise and Challenge of Brownfield Aerotropolises

Successful airport city/aerotropolis developments need to satisfy both spatial and social requirements. Developer-led efforts often satisfy neither. This paper suggests that that in many cases brownfields provide more fertile ground than greenfields for planned aerotropolis developments. This is the promise of brownfield aerotropolis development. The paper further suggests that the absence of a coherent key target group is often a key factor in diminishing planned airport city/aerotropolis growth. This is the challenge of all aerotropolis development. Because the absence of such a group can be a hindrance, the extent to which concerted common action can create such a coherent target group is explored. Insights are gathered from an exploration of two contrasting but successful brownfield redevelopments and from redevelopment efforts in the Atlanta airport area.

Where Does Noise Fall on People? Evidence from Atlanta Airport

Spatial heterogeneity of the determinants of airport noise is explored using houses sold near the Atlanta airport. Ordered probit locally weighted regressions (OPLWR) produce results substantively different than those using standard ordered probit. We find notable differences in the signs and magnitudes of the parameter estimates for different individual observations using OPLWR. For example, using a standard ordered probit model, the coefficient estimate for the connection between the percentage of neighborhood households headed by a Hispanic and noise is double the average of the OPLWR estimates. Moreover, while the standard ordered probit point estimate is positive, 37 percent of the estimates using OPLWR are negative. Even in relatively small areas, the OPLWR results imply that the standard ordered probit model can generate biased estimates due to ignored heterogeneity among individual houses.

Our Experience in Earthquake-ravaged Haiti: Two Nurses Deployed With a Disaster Medical Assistance Team

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) identifies each regional Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) by its state letters and team number. The FL-4 disaster team, based in the Jacksonville area of Florida, received the long-anticipated call to activate and report to staging on January 22, 2010. We reported to an Atlanta airport hotel, where Headquarters staff provided the pre-deployment briefings that included vaccinations, behavioral health issues, Haiti hazard assessment, and physical screenings.

Assessment of emissions at busy airports

Emissions are determined in the vicinity of airports and used to demonstrate that aircraft movements in the airport, as measured by landings and takeoffs, are not sufficient to evaluate the cumulative emission formation for an airport. In the investigation, eight busy airports are selected and three databases considered to obtain values of significant emissions, that is, hydrocarbons (HCs), CO, NOx, CO2 and H2O. Findings for airports are compared. The results indicate that, despite the fact that aircraft movements for the Atlanta airport are the highest of those considered and almost double those for the London airport, the latter has greater emissions of HCs and NOx. Although the Atlanta airport exhibits greater emissions of CO and CO2 than the London airport, the difference is minor but opposite to the expected values based on numbers of landings and takeoffs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Changing Noise Levels and Housing Prices Near the Atlanta Airport

ABSTRACTUsing hedonic models, we analyze the effects of proximity and noise on housing prices in neighborhoods near Hartsfield‐Jackson Atlanta International Airport during 1995–2002. Proximity to the airport is related positively to housing prices. We address complications caused by changes over time in the levels and geographic distribution of noise and by the fact that noise contours are measured infrequently. A general decline in noise boosted housing prices during 1995–2002. After accounting for proximity, house characteristics, and demographic variables, houses in noisier areas sold for less than houses subjected to less noise. Also, the noise discount is larger during 2000–2002 than 1995–1999.

SPATIAL HEDONIC MODELS OF AIRPORT NOISE, PROXIMITY, AND HOUSING PRICES*

ABSTRACT Despite the refrain that housing prices are determined by “location, location, and location,” few studies of airport noise and housing prices have incorporated spatial econometric techniques. We compare various spatial econometric models and estimation methods in a hedonic price framework to examine the impact of noise on 2003 housing prices near the Atlanta airport. Spatial effects are best captured by a model including both spatial autocorrelation and autoregressive parameters estimated by a generalized moments approach. In our preferred model, houses located in an area in which noise disrupts normal activities (defined by a day–night sound level of 70–75 decibels) sell for 20.8 percent less than houses located where noise does not disrupt normal activities (defined by a day–night sound level below 65 decibels). The inclusion of spatial effects magnifies the negative price impacts of airport noise. Finally, after controlling for noise, houses farther from the airport sell for less; the price elasticity with respect to distance is −0.15, implying that airport proximity is an amenity.

Changing Noise Levels and Housing Prices Near the Atlanta Airport

Using hedonic models, we analyze the effects of proximity and noise on housing prices in neighborhoods near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport during 1995-2002. Proximity to the airport is related positively to housing prices. We address complications caused by changes over time in the levels and geographic distribution of noise and by the fact that noise contours are measured infrequently. A general decline in noise boosted housing prices during 1995-2002. After accounting for proximity, house characteristics, and demographic variables, houses in noisier areas sold for less than houses subjected to less noise. Also, the noise discount is larger during 2000-2002 than 1995-1999.

A study on the performance evaluation of major international airports in the world

PurposeThis paper aims to assess the performance evaluation of major international airports in the world.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors utilized data envelopment analysis in an input‐oriented method to discuss the overall operational performance of 20 major international airports between 2001 and 2005. They used cross efficiency measure to determine the international airports that enjoy the best operational performances and used the bilateral model to compare the performance differences between international airports of different regions.FindingsThe Atlanta Airport (ATL) in the USA and the Beijing Airport (PEK) in China experienced MPSS. The overall performance of international airports in Asia is better than those in Americas, Europe, and Oceania.Research limitations/implicationsService quality can be discuss in the field in the future.Practical implicationsIn sensitivity analysis, four inputs had positive impacts on overall performances.Originality/valueThe ATL in the USA and the PEK in China were the best practices for the other international airports.

Spatial Hedonic Models of Airport Noise, Proximity, and Housing Prices

Despite the refrain that housing prices are determined by and location, no prior studies of airport noise and housing prices have incorporated spatial econometric techniques. We compare various spatial econometric models and estimation methods in a hedonic price framework to examine the impact of noise on 2003 housing values near the Atlanta airport. Spatial effects are best captured by a model including both spatial autocorrelation and autoregressive parameters estimated by a generalized moments approach. The inclusion of spatial effects magnifies the negative price impacts of airport noise. Finally, after controlling for noise, houses farther from the airport tend to sell for less, implying that airport proximity is an amenity.

The nurse as mentor

The nurse as mentor