Hub Airports Research Articles

Flight Time and Frequency-Optimization Model for Multiairport System Operation

This study’s goal is to reduce the number of flights and alleviate congestion in hub airports. It proposes a flight time and frequency-optimization method for multiairport systems. A flight time and frequency-optimization model for multiairport system operation is created to minimize loss of passenger trip time. A k-means clustering algorithm is designed to solve the model and calculate indexes such as flight time and frequency, passenger trip-time loss, and distribution of airplane models and quantity. The calculation results of an example in China are as follows. Under multiairport system operation mode, passenger demands are divided into 7 categories; 11 flights satisfy all passenger demands; passenger trip-time loss is 129,573 min; and the average passenger load factor is 90.1%. Under an independent operation mode, passenger demands are divided into 8 categories; 13 flights satisfy all passenger demands; passenger trip-time loss is 173,705 min; and the average passenger load factor is 87.4%. The multiairport system operation mode not only improves passenger trip efficiency but also benefits airlines by improving the passenger load factor and reducing flights. Moreover, comparative analysis of a genetic algorithm versus a clustering algorithm further proves the accuracy of the clustering algorithm.

Enhancing Safety Risk Management with Quantitative Measures

At the airfield in hub airports, many activities occur that involve a range of participants, including various-size aircraft, ground vehicles, and workers. The safety management system is FAA's approach for systematically managing aviation safety. A major component of the safety management system is safety risk management (SRM), which entails analysis, assessment, and control of safety risks, including risks on the airfield. Current SRM has few specific safety models to estimate the likelihood or frequency of risks. This paper presents an example for development and incorporation of safety models into SRM. Specifically, it discusses safety models for runway incursion that use the following variables: total and general aviation operations, length of runway by type, number of taxiway intersections, snowfall, precipitation, number of hot spots, and construction activity. Categorization and processing of data were significant because each variable used could take on multiple forms, and some types of data involved review of airfield diagrams. The data used were from 137 U.S. hub airports for 2009 through 2014. For modeling, the negative multinomial distribution was used because it proved suitable for representing overdispersed data such as runway incursion frequency. Performance of the models was assessed through the goodness-of-fit measures of log likelihood, overdispersion, and cumulative residual plots. Models were developed for five severity categories of runway incursions and three types of surface events. The safety modeling approach presented here can serve as a foundation for development of other safety models that can be integrated into SRM to enable quantitative analysis of safety risks.

Investigating Neighborhood Change in Airport-Adjacent Communities in Multiairport Regions, 1970–2010

This research generated new knowledge in the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of airport-adjacent communities to better understand patterns of exposure to the negative externalities of hub airports over time. The research asked the following question: How has the population of historically marginalized groups living near airports changed with the rise of the jet age? The spatial analysis and descriptive statistics showed that airport-adjacent communities in multiairport regions generally have increased numbers of persons of color and increased numbers of renters compared with their respective metropolitan regions. In addition, the communities often underperform socioeconomically with respect to their region. The study also tested three theories from the literature to explain the relationship between airport infrastructure and the airport’s surrounding communities: the “power to resist” effect, the “push–pull locally unwanted land use” effect, and the “airport-centric activity center” effect.

A sustainable aviation sector index to benchmark the landside and airside based on airport-airline pairs

This paper develops and applies a sustainable aviation sector index to benchmark the performance of airport and airline pairs. The index is composed of two subindices that address the landside and airside of the aviation sector. These indices involve 5 dimensions and 25 indicators on the landside and 4 dimensions and 20 indicators on the airside, respectively. The sum of the products of the normalised values of the related dimensions on the landside and airside are then used to obtain single composite indicator values for each airport and airline pair. The airport and airline pairs to which these subindices are applied represent the main airport hubs of major international airlines. In total, 20 airport and airline pairs are subjugated to the analyses that contain 15 different airports and 13 different airlines. The results indicate the pairs that have above average performances in multiple aspects of aviation services and quality, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and sustainable aviation measures in a comprehensive manner. According to the results, the airport and airline pairs that are in the top 5 are those that are marked as P1, P5, P19, P14 and P16 in the sample. These leading pairs attain values between 8.8 and 7.2 in the integrated index whereas the average value for all pairs is 5.6. The research work contributes to the literature by providing an integrated approach to benchmark the landside and airside of the aviation sector. Such an integrated approach is useful for allowing airport and airline managers in partnering across the landside and airside to excel toward a more sustainable aviation sector to challenge the future.

An Econometric Dynamic Model to estimate passenger demand for air transport industry

Abstract In this paper, we propose an Econometric Dynamic Model (EDM) to estimate pax demand. We apply the panel data Arellano-Bover method to calibrate the EDM, which is validated by the Sargan test and the Arellano-Bond Autocorrelation test. We propose a forecasting approach using the EDM to foresee pax demand. Finally, we show an application of the EDM by proposing an approach to solve the Airline Airport Hub (AAH) location problem. The case study is about the Mexican air transport industry, AAHs are identified for each predicted year.

A sustainable aviation sector index to benchmark the landside and airside based on airport-airline pairs

This paper develops and applies a sustainable aviation sector index to benchmark the performance of airport and airline pairs. The index is composed of two subindices that address the landside and airside of the aviation sector. These indices involve 5 dimensions and 25 indicators on the landside and 4 dimensions and 20 indicators on the airside, respectively. The sum of the products of the normalised values of the related dimensions on the landside and airside are then used to obtain single composite indicator values for each airport and airline pair. The airport and airline pairs to which these subindices are applied represent the main airport hubs of major international airlines. In total, 20 airport and airline pairs are subjugated to the analyses that contain 15 different airports and 13 different airlines. The results indicate the pairs that have above average performances in multiple aspects of aviation services and quality, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and sustainable aviation measures in a comprehensive manner. According to the results, the airport and airline pairs that are in the top 5 are those that are marked as P1, P5, P19, P14 and P16 in the sample. These leading pairs attain values between 8.8 and 7.2 in the integrated index whereas the average value for all pairs is 5.6. The research work contributes to the literature by providing an integrated approach to benchmark the landside and airside of the aviation sector. Such an integrated approach is useful for allowing airport and airline managers in partnering across the landside and airside to excel toward a more sustainable aviation sector to challenge the future.

USE OF STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS IN THE VARIABILITY OF PASSENGERS AND CARGO TRANSPORT IN SOME AIRPORTS IN SÃO PAULO STATE, BRAZIL

ABSTRACT The proposed study is related to the identification of important factors that determine the feasibility of regional airport hubs in Sao Paulo State, Brazil. This way, new perspectives are created to map airports in this region based on economic criteria of operations and volumes. The study is based on statistical data analysis of time series related to operations and volume of passengers and cargo transport data sets during a fixed period of time. Stochastic volatility models are applied for the logarithmic transformed counting data set considering the four largest airports selected from a group of 32 airports in the Sao Paulo State chosen by their importance in the amount of passenger and cargo for the period ranging from the year 2008 to the year 2014. This study is a new approach in the analysis of air transport time series.

The Impacts of Civil Airport layout to Yunnan Local Tourism Industry

Abstract Under the new-type urbanization background, the rich tourism resources and the relatively well-developed civil aviation airport system make the civil aviation to overcome the time and space barrier, and promote the development of Yunnan's tourism urbanization. The tourism value of scenic resources and on air transport high accessibility, attracting more tourists, tourism related industry and practitioners, facilities, capital in tourism destination aggregation, forming urban tourism economy of scale and increasing marginal benefit, to promote the development of Enclave cities and towns. In the empirical study of Yunnan, based on correlation analysis, coupled coordination degree analysis, GIS spatial analysis method, it is found that civil aviation and the development of Yunnan tourism and urban development are highly positive correlation. By the local airport hub and spoke system structure and non-balanced spatial distribution characteristics influence, it formed three-level tourism town system in Yunnan. Finally the paper proposed suggestions on coordinating the development of aviation and tourism industry.

The strategic evolution of Aer Lingus from a full-service airline to a low-cost carrier and finally positioning itself into a value hybrid airline

Aer Lingus has been an unique airline as it transitioned from a full-service airline to a low-cost carrier and is currently positioned as a value hybrid airline. It has coexisted with Ryanair for decades and it encountered three imminent periods where bankruptcy prevailed from 1993 to 2009. The research aims to uncover the various strategies that were applied to structurally re-engineer the carrier in order to adapt to its evolving competitive landscape. The key pillars underpinning Aer Lingus’ turnaround as a value hybrid were as follows: strict adherence to capacity discipline; relentless cost control and value-adding, consumer-driven product differentiation; innovative partnerships including contract flying to alleviate its problematic seasonality issues inherent in Aer Lingus markets; and by re-engineering its Dublin-based hub airport. A visionary master plan for the hub was fabricated to capitalize on Ireland’s geographical positioning which targeted the traffic flows between UK/European and North American destinations through its synchronized connection network at Dublin.

CAIRO AIRPORT ANNUAL GASEOUS EMISSION INVENTORY

Civil Aviation is one of the most growing up industries around the world, which consumes large amounts of fossil fuel in its various operations such as takeoff, landing, power generation and each other ground services. This makes determination of emissions inventory from its sources for airports transaction very important to determine the effects of gaseous emissions and airport footprint. One of those airports is Cairo International Airport which is the major airport in Egypt and is going on to expand its operations and strategic plans aiming to become a large hub airport in the Middle East. This paper is calculating the emissions from the Airport sources (Aircraft movement, ground services, landside traffic and secondary power generators) by using the mathematical calculation for their emission factor. It was found that the most affected area is the area near runway end 05C which is near to Nasr city district and there are high traffic movements in comparison to the total passenger movement which is around77624 movement/year, and this number represents 52.8% of the total LTO Cycles in the airport. This makes it the most polluted area; thus, there is a need to redistribute the movements between the runways 05C, 05L and 05R.The traffic movements (245,000 vehicle/day) is very high in comparison to the total passenger movements which is 16 Million passenger/Year (about 43,836 passenger/day), this makes the underground an effective environmental control measure

Research on a robust multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment for hub airport

Gate assignment is one of the important tasks in the airport. The goal is to appoint an appropriate gate for the arrival or departure flight and ensures the flights are on schedule. So an appropriate and efficient gate assignment model can effectively decrease the flight delays and improve operation efficiency as well as service quality since it plays a major role in increasing revenues. In this paper, the multi-commodity network flow model is analyzed. And a robust multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment based on the objective of minimizing total time for passengers and balancing idle time for each gate is proposed to improve the service level and satisfaction of passengers and utilization rate of gates. The weighting method of linear is used to translate the multi-objective optimization model into the single objective optimization model. And ILOG CPLEX optimizer is used to solve the optimization model of gate assignment in order to obtain the reasonable gate assignment result. The schedule data of 116 flights from Sheyang Taoxian International Airport of China are used to validate the effectiveness of the constructed optimization model. And the multi-objective optimization model is compared with the existing mathematical model of gate assignment. The calculation and comparison results show that the constructed optimization model can significantly improve the assignment efficiency and satisfaction, and balance the utilization rate of gates. So the constructed optimization model of gate assignment can effectively provide a valuable reference for assigning gates.

High-speed rail and air transport competition and cooperation: A vertical differentiation approach

This paper considers vertical differentiation between air transport and high-speed rail (HSR) with different ranges of travel distance to analyze the air-HSR competition effects on fares, traffic volumes and welfare, as well as the conditions under which air-HSR cooperation is welfare-enhancing. The analysis is conducted in a hub-and-spoke network with a network carrier, an HSR operator, and a spoke airline, taking into account potential hub airport capacity constraint. We find that air-HSR competition in the connecting market may result in the network airline charging an excessively high price in the HSR-inaccessible market. This effect is present even when the HSR-inaccessible route is a duopoly-airline market. On the other hand, air-HSR cooperation increases fares in the connecting market, and an improvement in rail speed or air-HSR connecting time reduces airfare on the routes where HSR and the airline compete. When the airline cannot serve all the markets due to limited hub airport capacity, it would withdraw from the market in which it has less competitive advantage over HSR. Finally, air-HSR cooperation is more likely to be welfare-improving when the hub airport is capacity constrained, and when either air transport or HSR exhibits strong economies of traffic density.

Current and future noise impacts of the UK hub airport

Noise is a negative byproduct of aviation operations, the effects of which can have a significant impact on human health and welfare. In this study, we model the present day noise impacts from two London airports: Heathrow and Gatwick. We monetize perceivable and attributable impacts using a willingness to pay for abatement from hedonic pricing studies, and we monetize other health impacts by combining the value of life years lost from mortalities and a cost of illness approach. We find that noise generated by operations at these two airports impacts 255,800 people, contributing to 54 myocardial infarctions and 17 premature mortalities each year. We find annual total damages of £80.3 million and £0.87 million attributable to Heathrow and Gatwick respectively. Further, we calculate expected noise impacts in 2030. Due to capacity constraints and technology improvements, noise impacts are expected to decrease to £76.5 million per annum if neither airport undergoes expansion. However, if Heathrow expands through runway extension or construction of an additional runway, total damages increase £92.5 million or £104.6 million respectively. Expanding Gatwick with a second independent runway results in total annual damages of £78.8 million.

Network performance and competitive impact of the single hub – A case study on Turkish Airlines and Emirates

This paper introduces a new model for evaluating connectivity at hub airports. The Hub Connectivity Performance Analyser (HCPA), developed in this context, assesses both schedule- and comfort-related attributes of indirect flights and consolidates the results into two indexes: the Hub Connectivity Performance Index (HCPI) and the Hub Efficiency Index (φ). The proposed methodology is used to derive conclusions about the hub performance and efficiency of two modern influential super-connectors: Turkish Airlines and Emirates. Connectivity at Istanbul Atatürk and Dubai International airports is therefore evaluated for the said carriers and their alliance code-sharing partners. Historical growth and key O&D flows targeted by each carrier are identified and benchmarked to establish the competitive impact of their hubs. Findings indicate that Emirates operates an ultra-efficient hub, which has superior performance to that of Turkish Airlines; however, in a market-breakdown basis, the dominance is split between the two carriers. Given that both Istanbul Atatürk and Dubai International operate near capacity, the study concludes that the way forward for both carriers is either to opt for up-gauging their fleet or targeting higher hub efficiency.

Apron capacity at hub airports—the impact of wave‐system structure

SummaryAt hub airports, dominant airlines/alliance coordinate their flights in time with the aim of increasing the number (and quality) of connections, thus producing a wave‐system in traffic schedules. This paper addresses the impact of concentrating aircraft into waves on airport apron capacity.Existing models for apron capacity estimation are based on the number of stands, stand occupancy time, and demand structure, differing between representative groups of aircraft served at an airport. Criteria for aircraft grouping are aircraft type and/or airline and/or type of service (domestic, international, etc.). Modified deterministic analytical models proposed in this paper also take into account the wave‐system parameters, as well as runway capacity. They include the impact of these parameters on the number of flights in wave, stand occupancy time, and consequently apron capacity.Numerical examples illustrate the difference between apron capacity for an origin–destination airport and a hub airport, under the same conditions; utilization of the theoretical apron capacity at a hub airport, given the wave‐system structure; and utilization of the apron capacity at a hub airport when point‐to‐point traffic is allowed to use idle stands. Furthermore, the influence of different assignment strategies for aircraft stands in the case of hub airports is also discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Entry effect of low-cost carriers on airport-pairs demand model using market concentration approach

The trend of open sky policies and growth of low-cost airlines, the topic of airport-pairs demand is gradually being addressed in the golden aviation circle of Northeast Asia. The variety of flight services among the four major metropolises with dual-airport systems leads to a competition-cooperation relationship existing between various airports and airlines. Therefore, this study investigates the causal relationship between the route-level passenger demand and influential factors using aggregate data collected through website observations. The empirical study focuses on direct flights of airport-pair routes among Taipei, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo. Results of the passenger regression model indicate that frequency, code-share, and morning flights have positive impacts on increasing passenger numbers for airlines. Further, the market concentration degree of Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and entry effect of low-cost carriers are important for the route-level passenger demand. In addition, routes with departures and arrivals in hub airports have a considerable attraction relative to other airport-pair routes. Finally, the proposed passenger model performs well in predicting market share, especially for routes with high demand.

Modeling the joint choice of access modes and flight routes with parallel structure and random heterogeneity

This study focuses on the influence of ground access transportation on air travel. The error components logit model with parallel structure is first adopted to formulate the joint choice behavior of access, airports, and flights. The proposed model proves to be effective in exploring interdependence between choice dimensions and travelers heterogeneity. The empirical results indicate that fare discounting should be introduced at the city airport and the frequency of existing flight routes should be increased. To benefit the hub airport, authorities of the new airport mass rapid transit system should reconsider the tradeoff between time and cost for express trains.

Competitive responses of an established airline to the entry of a low-cost carrier into its hub airports

This paper investigates the competitive responses of China Eastern to the entry of Spring Airlines into its hub airports in Shanghai. The analysis takes into account of the actual and adjacent competition for both LCCs and full-service airlines (FSAs) within an airport-pair framework. The results of the econometric analysis showed that Spring put downward pressure on the average fares of China Eastern and other FSAs. But China Eastern responded more aggressively than other FSAs to Spring's competition on routes from the same and nearby airports. Having said that, the moderate price reduction of 4%–4.9% suggests that China Eastern did not perceive Spring as a serious competitor. Such limited impacts are due to restrictions imposed by the regulator onto Spring Airlines in terms of capacity control and access to major trunk routes.

Efficiency assessment and output maximization possibilities of European small and medium sized airports

The aim of this research is to investigate the operational efficiency and potential output increase scenarios of 21 small and medium sized airports (SMA) located in 10 different European countries. A key feature of the proposed Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models is the consideration of two novel inputs related to the number of airlines and scheduled routes operating at each airport, in addition to the more common capital non-discretionary inputs (runways, boarding gates and apron). These novel inputs are a way of considering the effects of the air transport market on airports' performance and growth prospects. In particular, a model to estimate the growth in passenger numbers, aircraft movements and cargo that can be achieved by an airport through increasing its number of airlines and routes, and assuming an efficient operation, is presented. Also, a multi-objective DEA model is proposed to explore the possible trade-offs in the output Pareto efficient frontier of a given airport. In addition, a second stage fractional regression model specific for explaining DEA efficiency scores is conducted and the results suggest that ownership structure and hub airport status are significant factors for explaining variations in the operational efficiency of European SMA.

Stockholm the capital of Scandinavia. Ten years on

Stockholm the Capital of Scandinavia has now been in place as a marketing platform for the city of Stockholm for over 10 years and has been through three different political administrations – an achievement in itself. Here the person behind the original strategy, Julian Stubbs, recounts how it came about and examines some of the key elements. An interview with Ola Zetterberg, CEO of Stockholm Business Region, provides insights into the strategy from both a business and political viewpoint and the article goes on to look at the Stockholm Business Alliance and how the strategy has had a positive impact on a wider region around the city. The article goes on to look at the results in terms of numbers, looking at tourism and the inward investment perspective. The article also examines the challenges and things still left to be done in the Stockholm region. These include its competition with the Oresund Region (Copenhagen - Malmo region now known as Greater Copenhagen), the proposed 8 million city high-speed rail link project, the challenge of not having a strong hub airport in Stockholm region, and how the life science industry is in danger of slipping off the map if it is not better promoted and co-ordinated. The article finally touches on the challenges of affordable housing, architecture and even the lack of a strong film industry in the region.