Airport capacity representation based on airside simulations

Airport capacity as key indicator of airport system performance, measures a variable with an increasingly constraining effect on air traffic development, so that airport capacity optimization is becoming one of the main objectives for future developments of airport infrastructure and aircraft alike. Computer simulations are commonly used to perform "what-if-studies" to evaluate alternative future development options in this field, while there is still no established practice for the presentation of meaningful airport airside capacity values based on simulation output. In this paper an approach is presented to establish robust capacity values based on fast time simulation results. It is based on previous work by E. Gilbo [1], adapted to ensure robust results while taking the requirements in the context of the simulation-based approach into account and enhanced to produce not only ultimate capacity figures but to also evaluate the practical capacity of an airport system, which has direct practical relevance especially in the context of flight scheduling. The results of an exemplary application demonstrate that the capacity representation provides a good understanding of the capacity impact for different development alternatives while it is also possible to aggregate the results to a single relevant performance indicator value.