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The right choice between possible types of passenger terminal buildings is the key to a successful airport design project. Historically, in the earlier days of aviation the designer's concern was directed to aircraft and to the adequacy of the ground facilities which each airport provided. As the aviation grew, airport passenger buildings grew more complex and more expensive, to the point of being viewed as a key to the airport's economic performance. In this context, the process of selecting a terminal concept became fundamental for planning and designing airport terminal buildings. However, almost no methodology is available at the initial planning level for the selection of terminal concepts, and very little research has been done in this area.

The thesis uses a comprehensive case study of the UK airport planning process to generate hypotheses to be tested. The hypotheses are that the use of more formal planning disciplines to the expansion of the London area airports would have allowed a more appropriate solution than those apparently preferred by the government; further, that this change in the planning process would only be beneficial if accompanied by changes in the framework for airport planning. It is seen to be necessary that the ground rules are known and that the interactions between all affected groups and the decision processes are transparent if the final result is to bear a strong resemblance to the project as planned. A possible solution is developed in the case study by using elements of this alternative methodology, resulting in a proposal for an extra short runway at Heathrow.

The past decade has seen the emergence of the Transitions Management theory rise to fame as the leading approach for dealing with the complex problem of sustainability. Its underlining principle considers sustainability as inherently difficult and requiring radical system changes to the wider society. Defined as a deliberative and prescriptive framework, it sets to influence governance activities through a gradual structured process. However, concerns have been raised which question the scope and practice of Transitions Management, including the criticism of its simplistic and narrow view, focussing primarily on technological innovations and policy influence while having little reflection on the dynamics and social relations involved in transitions. This research thesis aims to develop further insights to understand better the dynamics within the transitional process towards sustainability. By looking at the case of an international airport’s ongoing efforts to become more sustainable, this thesis argues that the social dynamics offer a significant contribution to the shaping of a sustainability agenda, by enabling practices that also seem vital in the framework of Transitions Management. This thesis applied ethnography as the primary approach to this research inquiry. The data collection involved qualitative interviews, documentary analysis, and participant observations spanning over 18 months between the periods of 2010-2012. Drawing on the critical studies of management and organisational theories, the research focus was on addressing the three key questions of what is the sustainability agenda, who decided on the agenda and how has the agenda been decided, within the context of airport operations. While other key issues have emerged from this research study, those aspects have underlined the tensions constituted in the everyday practices of an airports operations, how the conditions of tensions have enabled a positive influence, and how this is seen as significant to contribute to the theoretical understanding for dealing with the sustainability transitions process. Building on this perspective, this thesis further explored the dynamics of the individuals’ struggle, and suggests that it is part of a sense making process that also helps to construct the meaning of sustainability. In addition, it has identified how this experience of struggle has facilitated resistance “for changes” among individuals, and how this permits positive outcomes which are continuously shaping the agenda of sustainability and practices at the Airport.

The main content of this master´s thesis is Airport Operations Management and it´s application on regional airport Brno – Tuřany. The study analyses common airport operations at the airports and compares it with actual situation at Brno airport. Focusing on comparsion, new upgrading or suggestions for increasing the operations are made. The part of thesis encloses also an approach to contemporary issues in greening the airports and air traffic.

Over the last 20 years, internal use of Performance Management(PM) within organizations has become much more complex in terms measurement techniques and approaches as well as their deployment within different organizational structures. In contrast to the traditional use of PM as an intra-organizational system, the emergence of networked operations, has extended organizational boundaries of Performance Management System (PMS) to new operational settings where actors often deal with a challenge of Collaborative Measures. Consequently, there is a significant lack of feedback and feedforward reporting mechanisms. This raises an important question for Performance Measurement &amp; Management (PMM) literature. How do actors manage operations through inter- organizational performance measures? Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the management of collaborative measures in a quest to attain better operational performance for inter- organizational PM. The thesis builds on four studies investigating a collaborative PMS for capacity enhancements in airport operations. Due to their operational complexity and highly networked subsystems, airport operations provided a fitting empirical scene for studying PM that transcends organizational boundaries. Within the context of this thesis, airports are viewed as a System of System (SoS), and inter- organizational PM is investigated with the dimensions Organizational Complexity, Continuous Improvement and Social system. The studies use a multimethod approach, including longitudinal action research, multiple-case study, Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Classification and Regression Tree method (CART) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Method. The findings show that that (1) inter- organizational performance is affected by intrinsic Performance Measurement Complexity (PMC) which aggregates as interactive complexity with many actors. (2) The challenge of feedback and feedforward mechanisms as a dual control for collaborative performance is analysed with four cybernetic functions: sensor, commander, actuator and process. (3) The concept of Reflective Performance Measurement System (RPMS) is introduced with general conditions to facilitate collaborative decision-making within such platforms. / <p>This research was conducted within the framework of the European Doctorate in Industrial Management—EDIM, which is funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission. QC 20170524</p> / MASCA- Managing System Change in Aviation

The increase in the types of airspace users (large aircraft, small and regional jets, very light jets, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.), as well as the very limited number of future new airport development projects are some of the factors that will characterize the next decades in air transportation. These factors, associated with a persistent growth in air traffic will worsen the current gridlock situation experienced at some major airports. As airports are becoming the major capacity bottleneck to continued growth in air traffic, it is therefore primordial to make the most efficient use of the current, and very often, underutilized airport infrastructure. This research thus proposes to address the increase in air traffic demand and resulting capacity issues by considering the implementation of operational concepts and technologies at underutilized airports. However, there are many challenges associated with sustaining the development of this type of airports. First, the need to synchronize evolving technologies with airports' needs and investment capabilities is paramount. Additionally, it was observed that the evolution of secondary airports, and their needs, is tightly linked to the environment in which they operate. In particular, sensitivity of airports to changes in the dynamics of their environment is important, therefore requiring that the factors that drive the need for capacity expansion be identified and characterized. Finally, the difficulty to evaluate risk and make financially viable decisions, particularly when investing in new technologies, cannot be ignored. This work thus focuses on the development of a methodology to address these challenges and ensure the sustainability of airport capacity-enhancement investments in a continuously changing environment. The four-step process developed in this research leverages the benefits yielded by impact assessment techniques, system dynamics modeling, and real options analysis to 1) provide the decision maker with a rigorous, structured, and traceable process for technology selection, 2) assess the combined impact of interrelated technologies, 3) support the translation of technology impact factors into airport performance indicators, and help identify the factors that drive the need for capacity expansion, and finally 4) enable the quantitative assessment of the strategic value of embedding flexibility in the formulation of technology portfolios and investment options. The proposed methodology demonstrates, through a change in demand at the airport modeled, the importance of being able to weigh both the technological and strategic performance of the technology portfolios considered. Hence, by capturing the time dimension and technology causality impacts in technology portfolio selection, this work helps identify key technologies or technology groupings, and assess their performance on airport metrics. By embedding flexibility in the formulation of investment scenarios, it provides the decision maker with a more accurate picture of the options available to him, as well as the time and sequence under which these should be exercised.

This dissertation aims at improving the efficiency, robustness, and flexibility of airport operations through intelligent gate assignment. Traditional research on gate assignment focuses on the accommodation of passengers' demands such as walking time of passengers, and the robustness of gate assignment. In spite of its importance on the ramp operations, there is a lack of research to account ramp congestion when gates are assigned. Therefore, this dissertation proposes a new perspective on the gate assignment that accounts for ramp congestion. For that purpose, a ramp operations model based on observations at Atlanta airport is presented to understand the characteristics of aircraft movement on the ramp. The proposed gate assignment problem minimizes passenger-time spent on ramp areas. In addition, this dissertation is conducted to satisfy the needs of passengers, aircraft, and operations from the perspectives of passengers. Using actual passenger data at a major hub airport, the proposed gate assignment is assessed by means of passengers' transit time, passengers' time spent on the ramp, and passengers' waiting time for a gate. Results show that the proposed gate assignment outperforms the current gate assignment in every metric. This dissertation also analyzes the impact of gate assignment on departure metering, which controls the number of pushbacks in order to reduce airport congestion. Then, some of departing flights are held at gates, so it increases the chance of gate conflict, which reduces the efficiency of departure metering as well as ramp operations. In order to analyze the impact of gate assignment on departure metering, this dissertation simulates departure processes at two airports. Results show that the proposed robust gate assignment reduces the occurrence of gate conflicts under departure metering and helps to utilize gate-holding times to some extent.

Today, airports form a key part of global infrastructure in an increasingly globalised world. There is great competition between them to attract passengers and serve airlines in their role of transporting people regionally and internationally. Abu Dhabi International Airport is one such airport. Terminal 3 is the home of Abu Dhabi’s major carrier, Etihad Airways, one of the world’s fastest-growing international airlines. The research described in this thesis focuses on applying the Lean methodology to the passenger departure process in Terminal 3. The essential essence of ‘Lean’ is doing more with fewer resources by adopting a programme of continuous process improvement resulting in continually declining costs, mistakes and work-in-progress. The special environment of any airport, especially a major international hub made applying Lean principles difficult. This resulted from the large presence of Class I wastes or muda which could potentially change, perhaps dramatically, at short notice. This made this research significantly different from previous applications of Lean philosophy. Also, large, cumulative variations in demand set in an environment where rapid expansion of the airport is taking place also created major difficulties because of the shifting flow of passengers. Despite this, the research succeeded in achieving its aim and developed various rules from parameters based on the acronym SERVICE and an associated implementation methodology based on the Lean philosophy. Together these will help airline managers and staff to eliminate the waste of available resources and so increase passenger flow through various stages of the process in line with Lean philosophy. The research makes several important contributions to knowledge, especially in the field of Lean improvements. The contribution of this work arises from its systematic examination of the passenger departure process. The research has facilitated developing a detailed model which addresses both particular process groups and the effects of passenger class on the allocation and use of resources. This research has shown that large differences exist between the operating environment of a major international airport and those processes to which Lean principles have previously been applied. Nevertheless, despite these differences, this research has proved the Lean philosophy may be usefully applied to airport operations. Operating conditions within the passenger departure process mean that understanding the special operating environment of airports is vital. This research resulted in a discrete event simulation model of the airport much more accurate and detailed than those described in previous studies of passenger departure processes. The research then proved an improved model, which may be used experimentally to support conclusions reached from the broader application of Lean philosophy. The research observed and analysed the effects of large and cumulative peaks and troughs in demand against a background of rapid development of Abu Dhabi Airport. The researcher also evaluated the special internal and external effects on the processes, often at short notice. Consequently, there is no single ‘universal’ solution because of the major need for operational flexibility and for a close correlation between operational and strategic need. Despite these many difficulties the results of this research are a practical and straightforward series of improvements, which may be applied by airport staff themselves without need for complex computer models, simulation or dedicated experts. This will create conditions for continuously improving process performance during the passenger departure process. It will also help managers accurately identify critical areas where more radical action of increasing physical resources is needed. Finally, based on findings, the research makes several recommendations for further work.

The evolution of the airport business is demonstrated by airports that are adopting new business strategies and commercial models, which allow them to be, for example, service providers instead of real-estate managers, with the focus on cost reduction and increasing non-aeronautical (commercial) revenues. Information technology (IT) can be used by airports to achieve their business goals, such as enhancing performance by delivering cost reductions and generating additional revenue streams. Airports operate in an increasingly competitive and dynamic market, with the aim of attracting a larger share of hub traffic from neighbouring airports. Therefore, financial and operational performance will be key elements for airlines when choosing a new airport destination. The research shows that airports are more focused on passenger satisfaction, resulting in airport performance indicators that have the passenger at its operational core and performance targets (e.g. Airport Service Quality passenger satisfaction survey). IT plays an important role in increasing airport performance through the automation of processes such as the deployment of common-use check-in desks and self-service check-in kiosks. Studies of other industries have shown evidence that IT impacts firm performance, but there have been few studies related to the airport industry. Thus, the aim of this research is to assess the relationship between IT and airport performance, and it proposes a conceptual framework to assess the relationship between IT and airport performance by drawing from studies in other industries. Two methodologies were used in this research, the first one was the case study, and the second one was the online survey. The case studies consisted of 16 faceto- face interviews with senior staff representing two airports in Asia, one airport in Australia, and one airport in Europe. The case studies result show that there is a relationship between IT and airport performance ... [cont.].