Air Taxi Skyport Location Problem for Airport Access

Witnessing the rapid progress and accelerated commercialization made in recent years for the introduction of air taxi services in near future across metropolitan cities, our research focuses on one of the most important consideration for such services, i.e., infrastructure planning (also known as skyports). We consider design of skyport locations for air taxis accessing airports, where we present the skyport location problem as a modified single-allocation p-hub median location problem integrating choice-constrained user mode choice behavior into the decision process. Our approach focuses on two alternative objectives i.e., maximizing air taxi ridership and maximizing air taxi revenue. The proposed models in the study incorporate trade-offs between trip length and trip cost based on mode choice behavior of travelers to determine optimal choices of skyports in an urban city. We examine the sensitivity of skyport locations based on two objectives, three air taxi pricing strategies, and varying transfer times at skyports. A case study of New York City is conducted considering a network of 149 taxi zones and 3 airports with over 20 million for-hire-vehicles trip data to the airports to discuss insights around the choice of skyport locations in the city, and demand allocation to different skyports under various parameter settings. Results suggest that a minimum of 9 skyports located between Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn can adequately accommodate the airport access travel needs and are sufficiently stable against transfer time increases. Findings from this study can help air taxi providers strategize infrastructure design options and investment decisions based on skyport location choices.Comment: 25 page

Scalable Persistent Storage for Erlang

The many core revolution makes scalability a key property. The RELEASE project aims to improve the scalability of Erlang on emergent commodity architectures with 100,000 cores. Such architectures require scalable and available persistent storage on up to 100 hosts. We enumerate the requirements for scalable and available persistent storage, and evaluate four popular Erlang DBMSs against these requirements. This analysis shows that Mnesia and CouchDB are not suitable persistent storage at our target scale, but Dynamo-like NoSQL DataBase Management Systems (DBMSs) such as Cassandra and Riak potentially are. We investigate the current scalability limits of the Riak 1.1.1 NoSQL DBMS in practice on a 100-node cluster. We establish for the first time scientifically the scalability limit of Riak as 60 nodes on the Kalkyl cluster, thereby confirming developer folklore. We show that resources like memory, disk, and network do not limit the scalability of Riak. By instrumenting Erlang/OTP and Riak libraries we identify a specific Riak functionality that limits scalability. We outline how later releases of Riak are refactored to eliminate the scalability bottlenecks. We conclude that Dynamo-style NoSQL DBMSs provide scalable and available persistent storage for Erlang in general, and for our RELEASE target architecture in particular

Airport access and travel time uncertainty

The implications of travel time uncertainty on the operational efficiency of airport terminals have until now not been examined. With the forecast growth in congestion levels predicted for all modes of transport, not only will travel time uncertainty increase but its impact may increase also. The first part of this thesis covers the analysis of two passenger surveys conducted at Manchester Airport and Birmingham Airport. These surveys had the objective of providing evidence to support or dispute the belief that air travellers react to travel time uncertainty. The research identifies that passengers do react by allowing margins of safety for their access journeys, and that this change in behaviour will modify the arrival distribution patterns at airports. The second part of this thesis examines how airport passenger flows could be altered by a change in the arrival distribution of originating passengers at airport terminals. Three airports - Manchester, Birmingham and East Midlands International - are modelled using a simulation tool and tested to assess how a shift in arrival distribution affects queuing and peak passenger volumes within the airport terminal. The findings of this thesis show that airport passenger terminal operational efficiency is affected by access journey time uncertainty. It also identifies that passenger decision making can only be explained by various combinations of factors. Possible methods of minimising the effects of travel time uncertainty are considered. The advantages and disadvantages of access journey time uncertainty for airports and airlines are discussed. It concludes that, to be successful in overcoming negative aspects, both parties must provide a service that results in customer satisfaction. This is the only sure way to maintain their respective revenue levels and secure their future in what is becoming an increasingly competitive industry

THE CAPACITY AND CIRCULATION OF PASSENGER TERMINAL BUILDING IN REGIONAL AIRPORT (CASE: MINANGKABAU AND ADISUTJIPTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS OF INDONESIA)

The dissertation explains about capacity and flow inside terminal buildings in two regional airports in Indonesia: Minangkabau and Adisutjipto International Airports. Both airports have similar characteristics of passengers’ number and locations as tourism areas. Secondary data in the form of existing terminal layouts and air traffic numbers were gained from both airports authorities in Indonesia. The analysis was carried out using the formulas from Japan International Cooperation Agency – Directorate General of Civil Aviation of Indonesia(JICA-DGCA) studies in 1996 for significant areas in the terminal building, Ashford and Wright formula for calculating aircraft movement per hour, Microsoft Excel for calculating the 10-year passenger growth rate, and SPSS for determining the linear equation for domestic departure resulted in the forecasted saturation in the near 2020 for both of airports, especially on passengers’ handling areas such as boarding lounge (for departure) and baggage claim area (for arrival). The research resulted in ideas to overcome problems related to the increasing capacity by adding areas (if possible) and changing layouts. Some other options such as implementation of more effective signage and the suggestion of centralizing security checking areas also are being brought—though needed further research. There should be an addition of numbers of security check lines, appropriately to the increasing number of passengers. If a single queuing line creates delays, then the need for extra line(s) is a necessity Keywords: Airport, Terminal Building, Capacity, Flow, Minangkabau, Adisutjipto 

Airport capacity utilization in Nigeria : a performance and efficiency analysis

Most airlines in Nigeria fly at about the same time of the day creating great strains on airports’ runways and air traffic management. This study examines air traffic flow: recorded landings and take-off times, arrival times and time between arrivals and times spent in the airport. The data collected were analyzed using the queue theory to know the airport turnaround time and the rate of usage of the airport as well as time variation in usage pattern. The results showed that the airport was grossly underutilized; most domestic traffic movements had two main peaks (morning and evening) with the headway been dangerously close. There is grave danger in clustered take-offs and landings so it was advised that to boost airport capacity utilization staggering of airlines’ schedules should be encouraged

Airport landside sustainable capacity and level of service of terminal functional subsystems

The airport terminal is a complex building composed of many functional subsystems dimensioned to host passenger traffic, considering an appropriate level of service (LoS). The most widely known method to assess the LoS and design the terminal areas is the Airport Development Reference Manual by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Based on this, a calculation tool in Microsoft Excel® was implemented to assess the capacity and dimension of the facilities for each functional subsystem of the terminal. The tool, composed of nine correlated spreadsheets, is a useful model to design new structures, evaluate the LoS currently offered, plan interventions, and face the new rules of passenger distancing due to the COVID-19 emergency. An international airport terminal with 20 million/year including Schengen and extra-Schengen passengers was studied. The LoS of the terminal subsystems was assessed and the areas needed for each subsystem were calculated. In the analyzed case study, most subsystems (departure hall, check-in, boarding gates, baggage claim, and arrival halls) were over-designed, according to the definition of the IATA LoS. This means that available spaces for queues and holding are sufficiently large to easily face the new rules of social distancing for passengers due to the recent COVID-19 emergency