Community sensitivity to changes in aircraft noise exposure

Interviews were conducted in the vicinity of Burbank Airport during a four month period during which a counterbalanced series of changes in aircraft noise exposure occurred due to runway repairs. Another interview was undertaken approximately one year after completion of the initial runway repairs. Noise measurements were made in conjunction with administration of a brief questionnaire to a near exhaustive sample of residents in four airport neighborhoods. The magnitude and direction of change of annoyance with aircraft noise exposure corresponded closely to the actual changes in physical exposure. Estimates were made of time constants for the rate of change of attitudes toward aircraft noise

The noisiness of tones plus noise

Judgment tests conducted to determine noise levels or loudness of tones plus nois

Designing Efficient Taxi Pickup Operations at Airports

This paper provides a practical procedure for designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports. How to do this effectively is an open question. Solutions are not available, and practices vary. They reflect different approaches to and lack of research on the subject. The solutions are often unsatisfactory. At many airports, passengers routinely suffer long waits outdoors, exposed to the elements, after a tiring journey. Such disagreeable experiences are avoidable. Designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports is problematic. The peculiarities of the process preclude easy solutions. First, the process involves queuing, so system performance is a nonlinear function of the loads. Second, it features unstable transient situations, since travelers typically arrive in bulk over short periods. Third, traffic is significantly differentiated and consists of a wide variety of groups implying different service characteristics. Standard results from queuing theory thus do not have a useful application to this problem. The design process uses simulation that is based on detailed observation of local practices. It involves four steps: (a) detailed local measurements of the arrival of both travelers and taxis, and the service rates provided by taxis in different queuing positions; (b) creation and validation of a simulation model sufficiently detailed to account for these realities; (c) exploration of design alternatives to estimate the characteristics of the service they would provide; and (d) selection of a preferred design that properly balances efforts to minimize average and extreme wait times. The paper demonstrates the procedure through application to Lisbon International Airport, Portugal.SIMUL8 Corporatio

Modelling the effects of gate planning on apron congestion

One of the infrastructural components that limits airport capacity is the available gate capacity. In order to use existing airport infrastructure, especially gates, more efficiently, one can look at new techniques to relieve congestion. One such technique is introducing socalled gate pit-stops. By introducing gate pit-stops, aircraft will be towed to a remote parking position between arrival and departure from the gate, in order to make space for other flights in the meantime [1]. The main risk of introducing gate pit-stops in airport operations is that the additional towing movements will inevitably increase the number of apron movements, potentially interfering with other traffic on or near the apron. As such, the main challenge in introducing gate pit-stops is modelling and integrating gate and apron movements, where a tradeoff can be made between gate utilization, towing movements, turnaround times and gate flexibility. Additionally, technological innovations such as an Electric Taxi System (ETS) need to be assessed as they can have a big impact on apron operations. Therefore, the effectiveness of gate pit-stops needs to be assessed, as well as the impact of factors such as gate utilization, towing movements and turnaround times on the effectiveness of such gate pit-stops.Aerospace Transport & Operation