Air line strategies for aircraft size and air line frequency with changing demand and competition: a simultaneous equations approach for traffic on the North Atlantic.

Airport planners need to know the forecast demand on the facilities provided airside at airports. For this they need to know how airlines will deal with traffic in terms of the size of aircraft and frequency of service. In response to increasing demand, airlines may increase capacity by increasing the frequency of flights or they may choose to increase aircraft size. This may yield operating cost economies. If the airports they operate from are capacity constrained they will be limited in the extent that they can change frequency which will limit their ability to compete with the number of frequencies offered. Consequently, these airports are excluded as are major hubs as frequencies will be influenced by connecting passengers. Routes are identified on the north Atlantic that can be analysed and conclusions are suggested on the basis of three stage least squares estimates for pooled time series-cross section data. An increase in passengers on the whole will result in a larger increase in frequency than in aircraft size but the impact of competition does not yield significant results due to the strategy of excluding certain categories of airport

Environmental effects of aircraft operations and airspace charging regimes. Final report

Project aim and outline: There has been anecdotal evidence that differences in airspace charging regimes influence airlines’ preferred routes and flight plans through European airspace. Routing aircraft over longer distances in order to reduce direct operating costs has a range of fuel burn and greenhouse gas emission consequences that have yet to be adequately quantified. The aim of this project is to study the environmental costs of different airspace charging regimes in Europe to ascertain whether the level of route charges that are levied for performing a flight affects the route that is flown between specific origin/destination pairs. Through a strategic assessment of a sample of airline flight plans and discussion with stakeholders, the study investigates the drivers of these apparently inefficient flight plans, quantifies the proportion of European routes that are affected (and the additional distances that are travelled) and identifies the greenhouse gas emission (focussing on carbon dioxide) implications of the observed behaviours

Climate related air traffic management. Final report. Assessing the role of air traffic management in reducing environmental impacts of aviation

Climate related air traffic management. Final report. Assessing the role of air traffic management in reducing environmental impacts of aviatio

The development of a more risk-sensitive and flexible airport safety area strategy: Part I. The development of an improved accident frequency model

This two-part paper presents the development of an improved airport risk assessment methodology aimed at assessing risks related to aircraft accidents at and in the vicinity of airports and managing Airport Safety Areas (ASAs) as a risk mitigation measure. The improved methodology is more quantitative, risk-sensitive, flexible and transparent than standard risk assessment approaches. As such, it contributes to the implementation of Safety Management Systems at airports, as stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The first part of the paper presents the methodological advances made in the development of accident frequency models; namely the building of a single comprehensive database of all relevant accident types, the collection and use of normal operations data in quantifying the criticality of a series of risk factors, and modelling accident frequency using multivariate logistic regression. The resulting models have better goodness-of-fit, sensitivity and specificity than standard risk assessment methodologies

The development of a more risk-sensitive and flexible airport safety area strategy: Part II. Accident location analysis and airport risk assessment case studies

This two-part paper presents the development of an improved airport risk assessment methodology aimed at assessing risks related to aircraft accidents at and in the vicinity of airports and managing Airport Safety Areas (ASAs) as a risk mitigation measure. The improved methodology is more quantitative, risk-sensitive, flexible and transparent than standard risk assessment approaches. As such, it contributes to the implementation of Safety Management Systems at airports, as stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The second part of the paper presents the analysis of accident locations, including the plotting of Complementary Cumulative Probability Distributions for the relevant accident types. These were then used in conjunction with the improved accident frequency models to produce Complementary Cumulative Frequency Distributions that could be used to assess risks related to specific runways and determine Airport Safety Area (ASA) dimensions necessary to meet a quantitative target level of safety. The approach not only takes into account risk factors previously ignored by standard risk assessments but also considers the operational and traffic characteristics of the runway concerned. The use of the improved risk assessment technique and risk management strategy using ASAs was also demonstrated in two case studies based on New York LaGuardia Airport and Boca Raton Airport in Florida

Quantifying and characterising aviation accident risk factors

This paper compares normal flights’ exposure to a number of meteorological factors with the equivalent for certain accident flights. The factors examined include visibility, ceiling height, temperature, crosswind, tailwind and instrument or visual meteorological conditions. Differences in exposure and to measure accident propensity related to different levels of risk exposure are quantified based on relative accident involvement ratios. Four categories of aircraft accidents relevant to the assessment of airport safety are examined

Modelling the location and consequences of aircraft accidents

Following the completion of two projects funded by the UK EPSRC and two for the Airports Cooperative Research Program, ACRP (2008, 2011), this paper aims to summarise the work on the location and consequence models . The projects overall focused on the development of an improved airport risk assessment methodology aimed at assessing risks related to aircraft accidents at and in the vicinity of airports and managing Runway Safety Areas (RSAs) as a risk mitigation measure. The improved methodology is more quantitative, risk-sensitive, flexible and transparent than traditional risk assessment approaches. As such, it contributes to the implementation of Safety Management Systems at airports, as stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The innovative elements of this research are two-fold. First, an accident database covering undershoots, overruns, and veer-off crashes close to runways at airports has been compiled and data on incidents has been added. Second, accident frequency models have been developed, for example, identifying the contribution of influencing factors such as variations in meteorological conditions. To allow airport risk to then be calculated entails comparing these cases with those contained in a ‘normal operations database’ where no accidents have been recorded but where the influencing factors are also known. Subsequent models have examined the location of the accidents and their consequences. It is this work that is the focus of this paper. Future work will focus on improving these aspects of the modelling and the consequences of crashes more than 2000 ft. but less than 10 miles from a runway end as well as impacts on third parties

Airport planning in a liberal setting: methodologies for appropriate airport provision

The thesis uses a comprehensive case study of the UK airport planning process to generate hypotheses to be tested. The hypotheses are that the use of more formal planning disciplines to the expansion of the London area airports would have allowed a more appropriate solution than those apparently preferred by the government; further, that this change in the planning process would only be beneficial if accompanied by changes in the framework for airport planning. It is seen to be necessary that the ground rules are known and that the interactions between all affected groups and the decision processes are transparent if the final result is to bear a strong resemblance to the project as planned. A possible solution is developed in the case study by using elements of this alternative methodology, resulting in a proposal for an extra short runway at Heathrow. [Continues.

ACRP Report 3: Analysis of aircraft overruns and undershoots for runway safety areas

ACRP Report 3: Analysis of Aircraft Overruns and Undershoots for Runway Safety Areas covers four areas: (1) Research collected on accident/incident data from several notable sources; (2) inventory of the conditions relating to each; (3) assessment of risk in relation to the runway safety area; and (4) discussion on a set of alternatives to the traditional runway safety area. Overruns and undershoots are factors in the design or improvement of runway safety areas (RSAs). The traditional approach to mitigate risk associated with accidents or incidents is to enlarge the runway safety area, but many airports do not have sufficient land to accommodate standard Federal Aviation Administration or International Civil Aviation Organization recommendations for RSAs. Airports that pursue this approach face extremely expensive and controversial land acquisition or wetlands filling projects to make sufficient land available. This report uses a probabilistic approach—a quantitative assessment—to analyze the RSA and begins a discussion on how alternatives to a standard 1,000-foot RSA may adequately mitigate risk. The report also assesses the factors that increase the risk of such accidents occurring, helps with understanding how these incidents may happen, and suggests that aircraft overrun and undershoot risks are related to specific operational factors. The report suggests that significant improvement to airport operations safety may be achieved by monitoring and managing these operational factors for both RSA planning and during actual aircraft operations, and it provides recommendations for collection and reporting of data in future accident and incident investigations and reporting to allow future improvements to these models