Security Baggage Process and on Time Performance at Guarulhos International Airport

The study recommended starting the process of screening domestic passengers’ checked baggage at Guarulhos – São Paulo International Airport – for airlines efficiency and security improvement reasons. The aviation industry in Brazil is at risk. Domestic flights, which accounts for over 85% of the airport activity at Guarulhos International Airport, do not have a process in which checked baggage of the boarding passengers are duly screened. That risk is significant to personal welfare and business. This Capstone Project demonstrated that such an issue should be addressed. Not only is there a potential risk involved in not screening baggage of domestic flights, but also airlines are not efficient when it comes to withdrawing pieces of luggage of passengers that do not board the flight. There is a security measure that forces the airlines to do so – eventually leading the flight to be delayed and having extra costs. The aim of this paper is to present an alternative to these issues. Through a financial assessment and statistical investigation, it has been proved that screening domestic checked baggage at Guarulhos airport could minimize delays and improve the overall security of domestic flights

Approximation for single-channel multi-server queues and queuing networks with generally distributed inter-arrival and service times

This dissertation is divided into two papers. The first paper is related to developing a closed-form approximation for single-channel multiple-server queues with generally distributed inter-arrival and service times, which are often found in numerous settings, e.g., airports and manufacturing systems. Unfortunately, exact models for such systems require distributions for the underlying random variables. Further, data for fitting distributions is sometimes not available, and one only has access to means and variances of the underlying input random variables. Under heavy traffic, excellent approximations already exist for this purpose. In the first paper, a new approximation method for medium traffic is presented. Encouraging numerical evidence for gamma distributed inter-arrival times, often found in many settings, and double-tapering distributions, such as normal, triangular, and gamma, for the service time, is found with the new approximation. In the second paper, a new approximation technique is studied for modeling a two-stage queueing network (QN) in which the first stage contains a multiple-server (G/G/k) queue and the second is composed of multiple single-server queues (G/G/1) in parallel. Airport terminals and other service areas, such as sports stadiums and manufacturing systems, are examples of systems where such two-stage QNs are encountered. The new approximation is rooted in approximating the variance of the service time in a G/G/k queue and leads to encouraging numerical behavior --Abstract, page iv

Lean Improvements to Passenger Departure Flow in Abu Dhabi Airport: Focus on Data from the Check-in Element

This is the second paper of three which concerns improving Passenger Departure Flow. The main aim of this paper is provide a summary of the research results, which includes both the reporting of empirical data collected at the Airport and the results obtained from simulation of existing flow for passenger departure process. The large quantity of data means this paper focuses on reporting data for the economy check-in element only. The project led towards development of rules for process of improvement for the entire departure process and explored the benefits of using the Lean philosophy for improving a range of airport processes. Airport processes are completely different than the manufacturing and other service sectors due to the complex interlinking between different stake holders such as airline regulations, national/international law etc

Air passenger demand forecasting and passenger terminal capacity expansion: A system dynamics framework

This paper deals with how to develop a model to forecast air passenger demand and to evaluate some policy scenarios related with runway and passenger terminal capacity expansion to meet the future demand. System dynamics frameworks can be used to model, to analyze and to generate scenario to increase the system performance because of its capability of representing physical and information flows, based on information feedback control that are continuously converted into decisions and actions. We found that airfare impact, level of service impact, GDP, population, number of flights per day and dwell time play an important roles in determining the air passenger volume, runway utilization and total additional area needed for passenger terminal capacity expansion

Building a Frameworks for Apron Planning, Design, Optimization, Future Proofing and Expansion

Airports are a significant economic driver that impact local and national interests. As such, in an ever connected world, these critical components of infrastructure face a growing number of influences which contribute to systems complexity and frequently impede further development. The point of this dissertation is to discuss and highlight the benefit of systematic thinking as planners approach airport planning challenges and update the aging aviation infrastructure in many regions of the world. This dissertation looks at a series of three papers that, examine the impact and influences of technology, distinguishes the effects of social and procedural changes, and offers one solution to simplify systems planning and integration within the aviation industry. The first paper presented is an examination of the history of Pan American World Airways through a data centered look at the growth of the fleet. The second paper examines some of the current and impending risk broken into categories, based on an examination of socio-technical systems. The final paper offers a solution a new system that could be constructed at an airport, which could simplify an aircraft turn around xiv process and help future proof airports for some of the expected changes that will impact the aviation industry. The solution proposed in CHAPTER V offers an example of a systemic change to the development of the apron area. This new concept integrates most of the apron area systems into a single system for aircraft loading and unloading. This work shows the need to accommodate industry changes as they develop, and clearly identifies some of the most obvious challenges and risks that face the aviation industry. This work further offers one method for solving and avoiding the costly interventions usually required to overhaul a system when emergent behavior necessitates a physical change to the infrastructure of the system. As with the development of any dissertation, much of this document has been updated and improved actively throughout this process. While this is a final document there is always more that can be added. This provided a complete overview of the apron area though and provides a clear contribution to the aviation industry