For many metropolitan areas in U.S., flight traffic is distributed between multiple airports that service the region. Since 2008, there are trends showing that in certain multi-airport regions, flight traffic is being consolidated toward one “dominant” airport (as in LA) where as in other regions, departure traffic is becoming more evenly distributed between the multiple airports. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects these trends in departure volume are having on overall departure delay times in these regions. For this analysis, data from the airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago are included. Based on the results of this research, there is evidence that the dominant hub model as evidenced in LA with LAX, is preferable when managing delays to a more dispersed model showcased in DC.

Since 1990, Asia was the fastest-rising market of global airline transportation in an area. Due to the demand of airline passenger and the volume of freight transportation in this area have increased apparently and also have potential demand, so a lot of Asian countries have followed to open up the new airport or have enlarged the existing facilities incessantly to meet this trend, and they always look forward to becoming the main international pivot airport in the area by these efforts. For the reason to response the trend of environmental changes and to impel the improvement of the airport¡¦s competitiveness, the Legislative Organization of Republic of China had approved ¡§The regulations of International airport garden¡¦s development ¡§at 2009. By this process, it has encouraged the competitiveness of the airport to become an important topic in Taiwan, and has also opened the Taiwanese's cognition about the competition of International airport. The purpose of this research includes: First, try to build up and construct the assessment index which can influence airport competitiveness and index weight via the arrangement of numerous literatures. Second, analyze the assessment project of the urban competitiveness to find out about the relation among the airport and urban competitiveness. Third, draft the basis of the development tactics for the Kaohsiung International airport by comparing the diversity of competitiveness in all respects among Kaohsiung International airport, Taipei airport and Xiamen airport. This research uses the study mode of professional questionnaires, and chooses government officials that have the background of management for air transportation and city development, scholar or airport users to fill out the questionnaire. By the way, this research by the analytical method of Analytic Hierarchy Process,¡]AHP¡^, can calculate each composition in structural frame and weight value of index, and then utilize the simple weighting method to compare the diversity of airport competitiveness among Kaohsiung, Taipei and Xiamen. We find that via the result of this study: First, in the aspect of building the evaluated index in airport competitiveness: The" safety "' is the most important item for assessing airport competitiveness, secondly in order is" management"',"' service ", "space" and "installations". However, the "demand" is the lowest important item that influences the airport competitiveness. Second, in analyzing the relation among competitiveness of airport and urban: There are the difference between main assessment and emphasized items for urban and airport competitiveness, but there are the relevance among the subsidiary index items of assessment. This demonstrates that between airport and urban competitiveness still has the characteristic to promote competitiveness each other. Third, in the aspect of carrying on the positive analysis to Kaohsiung, Taipei and Xiamen airport to draft the development tactics: (1) By the analysis of scenario analysis for the airport competitiveness among the Kaohsiung, Taipei and Xiamen airport, can find that the most competitiveness airport is Xiamen airport at the present stage. Moreover, the competitiveness for Kaohsiung airport is between Xiamen and Taipei airport in this competitiveness analysis result. (2) To improve the airport competitiveness of Kaohsiung, it can be achieved by strengthening it in the position of pivot traffic, improving the transport facilities, outside traffic and service of the airport, setting up logistics and Convention and Exhibition Center, strengthening marketing tactics, improving the political environment, cooperating with the tourism policy of country, strengthening relevant industries etc..

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman, has undertaken massive construction projects to develop its airports. Such development has taken place over a very short span of time and has involved particularly heavy investments. These projects were, and still are, funded by the governments. The financial return of these projects was not their prime objective, but they were implemented to satisfy the air transport demand and to gain prestige. Some of these projects were a success and some were not, due to a lack of proper and efficient planning and implementation. One could say that this is a natural situation considering the very short time frame in which they were completed after the independence of the GCC in the early 1970s coupled with the good financial situation of these countries. However, this situation will not continue forever; indeed, many of these countries have reviewed their implementation of projects, including airport development plans, positively. Nevertheless, there is a lack of strategic planning practices in many GCC airports, where an airport master plan (AMP) is used in isolation without a strategic plan. Generally, airport projects have not received adequate attention in terms of research on project implementation or strategic planning. Such projects cannot be considered as normal projects, as airports are unique, complicated and demanding due to their complexity, security and safety requirements, international regulations, operations, high cost and high versatility. Therefore, it is essential for any airport to introduce and implement a strategic plan before the enacting development plans to minimise the risk of failure. The competitive environment between the GCC members and the demand for ground and air transportation are factors that led airport management to implement new strategic policies and identify the way forward. This research explains the theory of strategic management and relates it to airports and the airport industry. It also uses Bahrain International Airport as a case study. The case study included the collection of qualitative data through interviews with airport authorities and companies. The collected data were applied to business tools. The new management, the Bahrain Airport Company (BAC), has created a plan for the implementation of a strategic plan, and the research found that strategic planning has been initiated at Bahrain International Airport (BIA) but that there are differences between its implementation and the general strategic planning theories. BIA has very special characteristics and is unique in terms of its patterns of traffic and geographical location. These should be considered to be success factors and must be used to compete with other airports and enable BIA to be one of the leading airports in the provision of effective and quality services.

<p>While the general public may be familiar with commercial airports, there are thousands of small General Aviation (GA) airports serving communities across the United States. Many of these airports are under pressure to survive and to bring in more revenue without impinging on the community and environment. Many organizations and governmental agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), now recognize the value of sustainable development and importance of operation to airport sustainability. Achieving operational sustainability is a means that may help airports on sustainable development and has positive impacts on airports’ economic viability, natural resource conservation, and social responsibility. However, airport operational sustainability is rarely defined in a consistent, measurable manner (Johnson & Gu, 2017).</p><p><br></p><p>This study explored the understanding of airport operational sustainability among five GA Regional and Local airports. Based on the findings, a new definition of airport operational sustainability for U.S Regional and Local GA airports was proposed. A set of performance metrics for airport operational sustainability was developed. The outcomes of the study may help airport shareholders contribute to airport sustainability planning through a better understanding of sustainability principles<a>. A set of performance metrics for airport operational sustainability </a>may be used to quantify the sustainability achievements of airports and help airports measure their performance.</p><p></p>

This study tries to increase the understanding on how expansionist aviation policies are rationalized against the background of climate change politics. The study executes a case study on the Netherlands, focusing on the Royal Schiphol Group aviation expansion project. In order to aid the understanding of the rationale justifying the expansion project, a discourse analysis inspired by environmental discourse theory, is employed. The methodological framework is grounded in John S. Dryzek’s literature on environmental discourses and supported by Fairclough’s school of critical discourse analysis. This framework allows the study to touch upon elements of knowledge and power and incorporates elements of explanatory critique. The results of the discourse analysis uncover that the Royal Schiphol Group expansion project is justified by two dominant narratives. The first is a rather practical argument that excludes the aviation sector from the countries national emission reduction pledges, based on the notion of economic competition. The second and most dominant narrative appears to be a reproduction of the discourse of ecological modernization, promoting the idea that ecological conservation and economic growth have a harmonized and even empowering relationship. Yet, the discussion uncovers that these discursive elements are largely grounded in false claims. It furthermore explains that, even though the knowledge claims appear to be flawed, they still prevail as alternative knowledge is neglected from the debate. Supported by literature of Geels, it argues that the dominance of these narratives is largely motivated by an attempt to resist structural change to low-carbon futures.

The purpose with this thesis is to investigate how the logistic and the configuration of the terminal buildings and the perceptions of the passengers at Stockholm Arlanda Airport are related to each other, and what effect it has on the passengers and their traveling within the airport. The focus will be on the logistic at all four terminal buildings that is within the Airport. To create a perception of the logistic at the Airport and how it is related to the passengers perceptions, the investigators need to make knowledge of the terminal buildings, and thereby try to link the logistic with the perception of the experience room. Swedavia is the company that own, operate at and manage Stockholm Arlanda Airport. The investigators will make an interview with employees at Swedavia to get a more profound understanding of how the company is thinking about the logistic issues that they need to overlook. There will also be interviews with travelers to get their perception of the logistic, design and atmosphere at the Airport. Observations will also be made at various times at the Airport with focus on all of the terminal buildings.  The investigators use qualitative and quantitative methods to reach a result. To achieve a result, the investigators will use theories and scientific facts and other available facts that will be helpful to reach a result that will be analyzed. / Denna uppsats handlar om Stockholm Arlanda Airport och syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur logistiken och utformningen i upplevelserummet hänger ihop, samt vilken påverkan detta har på resenärerna och resandet inom flygplatsen. Fokus kommer att läggas på logistiken i de fyra terminalbyggnaderna som finns inom flygplatsen. I undersökningen ses terminalbyggnaderna över för att skapa en uppfattning om logistiken och på så vis försöka koppla ihop logistiken med upplevelserummet. Swedavia är det företag som är verksam och driver Stockholm Arlanda Airport. Det är med de anställda inom Swedavia som intervjuer kommer att ske för att få en djupare förståelse hur företaget tänker i de logistikfrågor som eventuellt behöver ses över. Intervjuer kommer även att ske med resenärer för att få deras uppfattning om logistik, design och atmosfär inom flygplatsen. Förutom intervjuer kommer även observationer att genomföras på flygplatsen vid olika tillfällen och tider på dagen. De metoder som har använts i undersökningen för att komma fram till de resultat som behövs är kvalitativa och kvantitativa metoder. Detta uppnås genom att göra undersökningar i form av intervjuer, observationer, tillgänglig fakta, samt med hjälp av olika lämpliga teorier för att på bästa möjliga sätt komma fram till ett resultat som har analyserats fram.

The air transportation system plays a crucial role in modern society, comprising a major industrial sector as well as a key driver for adjacent economies. Moreover, it is a prime enabler of the modern way of life, characterized by access to products and services from around the world, and access to remote locations. Therefore there is a strong incentive to maintain the system and promote its growth. None the less, important challenges have plagued civil aviation, particularly the commercial aviation sector. On one hand, demand for air travel has grown dramatically and at an accelerated pace, in part due to the deregulation of airlines in 1978, providing airlines with the freedom to arrange their operational schedule freely and compete for markets. The dynamic nature of demand and its fast-paced growth contrasts with the relative rigidity of air transportation infrastructure development and the sluggish evolution of its operational architecture. The supply-demand mismatch that results has led to degradation in system efficiency, excessive delays, and substantial economic losses. This phenomenon is particularly exacerbated in the terminal area of major airports which have inevitably become operational choke points. On the other hand the environmental impact of air transportation, embodied primarily by the emissions and noise caused by aircraft operations, has also grown as a result of the increase in aviation activity, and has therefore become a major issue of public interest. Airport communities experience said environmental impact most intensely, particularly those associated with bottleneck airports, and thus represent a uniquely strong force opposing further expansion of air transportation in these areas where it is most needed. Past efforts to address these challenges have been notably stovepiped and have failed to recognize the importance of the relationship between the operational nature of the system and its environmental impact. Only recently have research efforts begun to incorporate a joint view of the operational-environmental problem that attempts to formulate solutions accordingly. However, the state of the art has yet to answer some of the most fundamental questions. First, the relationship between operational and environmental elements has not been quantified conclusively. Doing so is vital to understand the operational-environmental nature of terminal areas before any solutions can be considered. Secondly, many different types of solution alternatives have been proposed, such as the construction of new runways, redesign of operational procedures, introduction of advanced aircraft concepts, and transformation of airspace capabilities. However, a direct comparison between dissimilar alternatives that accounts for operational and environmental issues is rarely found, and yet remains crucial in the formulation of a solution portfolio. More importantly, the additive and countervailing interactions that different solutions have on each other are widely recognized but remain, for the most part, unknown. Because all solutions under consideration require an extended period of time to develop and represent very large economic commitments, the selection of a portfolio demands a careful look at the future to determine the adequate measures that should be pursued in the present. In response to this methodological need, this thesis proposes a strategic planning approach to investigate the operational-environmental nature of the air transportation system, as well as the adequacy of solution alternatives for terminal areas in the formulation of a portfolio. The state of the art currently incorporates elements of strategic planning, but has yet to address two important methodological gaps. First, the inherent systemic complexity of airport performance obfuscates its quantitative characterization, which is paramount in attaining adequate insight and understanding to support informed strategic decision-making in the selection of terminal area solutions. Second, there is significant uncertainty about the evolution of the aviation demand and its operational context, making the use of forecasts grossly inadequate for this application. A scenario-based approach is used in its place, but the current frameworks for the generation, evaluation, and selection of an adequate scenario set currently lack traceability and methodological rigor. To address the first gap, this thesis proposes the use of well established statistical analysis techniques, leveraging on recent developments in interactive data visualization capabilities, to quantitatively characterize the interactions, sensitivities, and tradeoffs prevalent in the complex behavior of airport operational and environmental performance. Within the strategic airport planning process, this approach is used in the assessment of airport performance under current/reference conditions, as well as in the evaluation of terminal area solutions under projected demand conditions. More specifically, customized designs of experiments are utilized to guide the intelligent selection and definition of modeling and simulation runs that will yield greater understanding, insight, and information about the inherent systemic complexity of a terminal area, with minimal computational expense. Regression analysis leverages the creation of response surface equations that explicitly and quantitatively capture the behavior of system metrics of interest as functions of factors or terminal area solutions. This explicit mathematical characterization enables a variety of interactive visualization schemes that allow analysts and decision makers to confirm or rectify expected patterns of behavior, and to discover the unknown and the unexpected. Said visualization schemes are also instrumental in communicating, in a very direct and succinct fashion, complex relationships, sensitivities, tradeoffs, and interactions, that would be otherwise too complex to explain or communicate transparently. More importantly, this approach provides a rigorous and formalized mathematical framework within which the statistical significance of different factors or terminal area solutions can be quantitatively and explicitly assessed, primarily by means of statistical hypotheses testing of regression parameter estimates, such as the analysis of variance, or the t-statistic test. This proposed approach does not suggest a new strategic planning process, but rather improves specific steps pertaining to performance assessments, and builds upon established practices and the recommended planning process for airports to leverage on the decades of experience supporting the existing strategic airport planning paradigm. On the other hand, the proposed approach recognizes the methodological limitations and constraints that lead to the lack of terminal area performance characterization within the strategic planning process, embodied primarily by computational constraints and unmanageable systemic complexity, and directly addresses these shortcomings by incorporating mature statistical analysis techniques into key steps of said process. In turn, the proposed approach represents a novel adaptation of the strategic airport planning process that results in greater knowledge, insight, and understanding, at a resource cost comparable to current airport planning practices. As such, this proposed approach is demonstrated using the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport as a representative test case, and constitutes a contribution to strategic airport planning given that it supports strategic decision making by revealing, at an acceptable analysis and computational expense, the various sensitivities, interactions, and tradeoffs of interest in operational-environmental performance that would otherwise remain implicit and obfuscated by systemic complexity. For the research documented in this thesis, a modeling and simulation environment was created featuring three primary components. First, a generator of schedules of operations, based primarily on previous work on aviation demand characterization, whereby growth factors and scheduling adjustment algorithms are applied on appropriate baseline schedules so as to generate notional operational sets representative of consistent future demand conditions. The second component pertains to the modeling and simulation of aircraft operations, defined by a schedule of operations, on the airport surface and within its terminal airspace. This component is a discrete event simulator for multiple queuing models that captures the operational architecture of the entire terminal area along with all the necessary operational logic pertaining to simulated ATC functions, rules, and standard practices. The third and final component is comprised of legacy aircraft performance, emissions and dispersion, and noise exposure modeling tools, that use the simulation history of aircraft movements to generate estimates of fuel burn, emissions, and noise. A set of designed modeling and simulation experiments were conducted to examine the interactions between exogenous and endogenous factors, as well as their main and quadratic effect, on operational metrics such as delay, and on fuel burn as the primary environmental metrics. Results show that for a gate-hold scheme used to manage surface traffic density, the departure queue threshold features a statistically significant interaction with the increasing number of operations, but that otherwise the relative percent change in the number of operations remains as the predominant exogenous factor driving operational and environmental performance. A separate design of modeling and simulation experiments was conducted to test the statistical significance of proposed geographical regional categories that could potentially be used to classify operations and capture operational demand characteristics such as fleet mix, time of day distribution, and arrival/departure route distribution. Results show that whereas the proposed categorization is statistically significant for a few metric of interest, marginally significant for others, and not statistically significant for most metrics, the proposed regional classification scheme is not appropriate for operational demand characterization. The implementation of the proposed approach for the assessment of terminal area solutions incorporates the use of discrete response surface equations, and eliminates the use of quadratic terms that have no practical significance in this context. Rather, attention is entire placed on the main effects of different terminal area solutions, namely additional airport infrastructure, operational improvements, and advanced aircraft concepts, modeled as discrete independent variables for the regression model. Results reveal that an additional runway and a new international terminal, as well as reduced aircraft separation, have a major effect on all operational metrics of interest. In particular, the additional runway has a dominant effect for departure delay metrics and gate hold periods, with moderate interactions with respect to separation reduction. On the other hand, operational metrics for arrivals are co-dependent on additional infrastructure and separation reduction, featuring marginal improvements whenever these two solutions are implemented in isolation, but featuring a dramatic compounding effect when implemented in combination. The magnitude of these main effects for departures and of the interaction between these solutions for arrivals is confirmed through appropriate statistical significance testing. Finally, the inclusion o advanced aircraft concepts is shown to be most beneficial for airborne arrival operations and to a lesser extent for arrival ground movements. More specifically, advanced aircraft concepts were found to be primarily responsible for reductions in volatile organic compounds, unburned hydrocarbons, and particulate matter in this flight regime, but featured relevant interactions with separation reduction and additional airport infrastructure. To address the second gap, pertaining to the selection of scenarios for strategic airport planning, a technique for risk-based scenario construction, evaluation, and selection is proposed, incorporating n-dimensional dependence tree probability approximations into a morphological analysis approach. This approach to scenario construction and downselection is a distinct and novel contribution to the scenario planning field as it provides a mathematically and explicitly testable definition for an H parameter, contrasting with the qualitative alternatives in the current state of the art, which can be used in morphological analysis for scenario construction and downselection. By demonstrating that dependence tree probability product approximations are an adequate aggregation function, probability can be used for scenario construction and downselection without any mathematical or methodological restriction on the resolution of the probability scale or the number of morphological alternatives that have previously plagued probabilization and scenario downselection approaches. In addition, this approach requires expert input elicitation that is comparable or less than the current state of the art practices.

As one of the most important economic sectors, the air-traveling industry was severely affected by the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis. However, the crisis did not affect entities (airports and airlines) with different market shares of passenger traffic equally. This paper implements regression models to explore key determinants of how the market shares of large entities evolve to get a better understanding of the allocation of air passenger traffic in multi-airport regions, both in the short and long-run post crisis (2009- 2015). Results from this paper show that the pre-crisis share and the traffic change on the set of routes being considered have significant effects on the change of share for large airport and airline entities in multi-airport regions. The large entities’ normalized change in share is higher if the pre-crisis share is higher an/or if total traffic fasslWe also find that low-cost carrier (LCC) large airlines gain more from the crisis than non-LCC airlines, and large airports from regions that have more than two airports have larger changes in market shares during and post crisis. In evaluating the long-term persistence of effects from the demand shock in the market, we observe that explanatory variables for airports tend to have lasting effects on the shares of large airports.

Airport performance is highly depended on effective retail management and management of airport concession. This thesis is tend to find the answer for two research questions developed, with a purpose to offer optimization of the dependency in a most convenient way:   What are the factors influencing successful retail operations in airports? and How to increase profit maximization and customers satisfaction through effective concession management?   The purpose of these research questions is to discover what is retail management in airport business sector. How airport operations management planning, implementing and evaluating their strategic decisions to generate revenues. More specifically, the purpose is focused on customers satisfaction and profit maximization approaches discovering airports. What is a correlation between attributes affecting airport revenue generation and operations management approaches, applied in different cases, when building relations with concessionaires. After conducting the survey with thirty international airports around the world, the importance of each attribute creating direct impact on customer satisfaction was measured and evaluated. The correlation between airport concession management types and the profit maximization was also identified and discussed. The research also became a starting point to investigate more factors influencing retail operations in airports.

Airports contribute about 5% of the gross domestic product and employ over 7 million people in the United States. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore the strategies that airport managers need to increase nonaeronautical revenue. A generic strategy does not exist to assist airport operators in generating operating income. Aeronautical revenue does not always provide sufficient funding for airport operations and existing research does not consistently provide effective strategies for all airports to generate revenue. The sample for this qualitative multiple case study consisted of 3 small commercial airport managers in the southeastern North Carolina coastal region. The conceptual framework for this study was built upon general systems theory. The data were collected using semistructured interviews and review of company documents. Transcript review and member checking were used to strengthen credibility and trustworthiness. Through methodological triangulation of the data sources, 3 emergent themes were uncovered during a qualitative data analysis: types of nonaeronautical sources of revenue, strategies for measurement of success, and size and location of the airport. The findings from this study may contribute to social change by providing insight into strategies that contribute to sustainability at small airports. Existing and aspiring small airport managers may apply the findings to contribute to the success of the communities in which their airports reside and the local economies in which they operate.