System Analysis And Modelling In Air Transport

Presenting a comprehensive coverage, Air Transport System Analysis and Modelling is a unique text dealing with the analysis and modelling of the processes and operations carried out in all three parts of the air transport system, namely, airports, air traffic control and airlines. Seen from a planners point of view, this book provides insights into current methods and also gives details of new research. Methods are given for the analysis and modelling of the capacity, quality and economics of the service offered to users and includes illustrative analytical and simulation models of the systems operations supported by an appropriate analysis of real world events and applications. Undergraduates and graduates in the field of air transport planning and technology, applied operations research and applied transport economics will find this book to be of interest, as will specialists involved with transport institutes and consulting firms, policy makers dealing with air transport and the analysts and planners employed at air transport enterprises.

Presenting a comprehensive coverage, Air Transport System Analysis and Modelling is a unique text dealing with the analysis and modelling of the processes and operations carried out in all three parts of the air transport system, namely, airports, air traffic control and airlines. Seen from a planners point of view, this book provides insights into current methods and also gives details of new research. Methods are given for the analysis and modelling of the capacity, quality and economics of the service offered to users and includes illustrative analytical and simulation models of the systems operations supported by an appropriate analysis of real world events and applications. Undergraduates and graduates in the field of air transport planning and technology, applied operations research and applied transport economics will find this book to be of interest, as will specialists involved with transport institutes and consulting firms, policy makers dealing with air transport and the analysts and planners employed at air transport enterprises.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis and modelling of demand, capacity, quality of services, economics, and sustainability of the air transport system and its main components - - airports, airlines, and ATC/ATM (Air Traffic Control/Management). Airports consist of the airside and landside area characterized by their capacities for handling demand such as aircraft, air passengers, and air freight/cargo shipments. Regarding spatial configuration, airlines generally operate hub-and-spoke (conventional or legacy airlines) and point-to-point (LCCs - Low Cost Carriers) air route networks. Their fleets consisting of different aircraft types provide transport capacity for serving demand including air passengers and freight/cargo shipments. The ATC/ATM includes the controlled airspace, traffic management and control facilities and equipment on the ground, space, and on board aircraft, and the ATC Controllers). They all provide capacity to handle demand consisting of the flights between origin and destination airports carried out by airline aircraft. The outcome from the interrelationships between demand and capacity at these components materializes as the quality of services. At airports and airlines this is generally expressed by congestion and delays of aircraft, air passengers, and freight/cargo shipments. At ATC/ATM, this is expressed by delays, horizontal and vertical in-efficiency, and safety of flights. Economics of each component relate to its revenues, costs, and profits from handling demand, i.e., providing services of given quality. The sustainability of air transport system has become increasingly important issue for many internal and external actors/stakeholders involved to deal with. This has implied increasing the system’s overall social-economic effects/benefits while reducing or maintaining constant impacts/costs on the environment and society at both global and regional/local scale under conditions of continuous medium- to long term growth.

Air Transport System Analysis and Modelling is a unique book dealing with analysis and modelling of the demand, capacity, quality of services, economics, and sustainability of three main components of the air transport system - airports, ATC (Air Traffic Control), and airlines.

The book provides deep insights into the operations and business of the air transport system, i.e., airlines, airports, and ATC/ATM (Air Traffic Control/Management). It reviews activities of the air transport operators, functions and processes, as well as the needs and requirements of users and customers in a simple and easy to understand way. A brief description of aviation history, the air transport system development and processes are followed by the elaboration of the aircraft’s elements, masses, payload-range diagrams, and balance. The fundamentals of airports and the ATC/ATM service providers and their contribution to the air transport system are also provided. Moreover, the most important elements in the airport and ATC/ATM system are examined, and the rules, regulations and simplified approaches to how these systems operate are described. The airlines play an important role in the air transport system as users of the airports’ and ATC/ATM service providers. Different business models are presented as well as the fundamentals of airline planning, operations and management (including passenger demand, market segmentation, scheduling, tariffs, alliances, and frequent flyer programs). Besides passenger transport, the book contains an overview and comprehensive guide of the air cargo transport by addressing the key issues such as: the current trends, market characteristics, unit load devices, cargo handling, air cargo documents, and transport of different kind of goods (perishable, live human organs, live animals, dangerous, heavy, etc.).

The International Air Cargo Industry: A Modal Analysis provides an objective “snapshot” of this fascinating industry from the perspective of those who conduct academic research into its expansion and consolidation covering three broad economic areas: costs, demand, and development.

The air transport industry has high economic impact; it supports more than 60 million jobs worldwide. Since the early years of commercial air travel, passenger numbers have grown tremendously. However, for decades airlines’ financial results have been swinging between profits and losses. The airline industry’s aggregate net average profit between 1970 and 2010 was close to zero, which implies bankruptcies and layoffs in downturns. The profit cycle’s amplitude has been rising over time, which means that problems have become increasingly severe and also shows that the industry may not have learned from the past. More stable financial results could not only facilitate airline management decisions and improve investors’ confidence but also preserve employment. This book offers a thorough understanding of the airline profit cycle’s causes and drivers, and it presents measures to achieve a higher and more stable profitability level. This is the first in-depth examination of the airline profit cycle. The airline industry is modelled as a complex dynamic system, which is used for quantitative simulations of ‘what if’ scenarios. These experiments reveal that the general economic environment, such as GDP or fuel price developments, influence the airline industry’s profitability pattern as well as certain regulations or aircraft manufactures’ policies. Yet despite all circumstances, simulations show that airlines’ own management decisions are sufficient to generate higher and more stable profits in the industry. This book is useful for aviation industry decision makers, investors, policy makers, and researchers because it explains why the airline industry earns or loses money. This knowledge will advance forecasting and market intelligence. Furthermore, the book offers practitioners different suggestions to sustainably improve the airline industry’s profitability. The book is also recommended as a case study for system analysis as well as industry cyclicality at graduate or postgraduate level for courses such as engineering, economics, or management.

Air traffic management (ATM) comprises a highly complex socio-technical system that keeps air traffic flowing safely and efficiently, worldwide, every minute of the year. Over the last few decades, several ambitious ATM performance improvement programmes have been undertaken. Such programmes have mostly delivered local technological solutions, whilst corresponding ATM performance improvements have fallen short of stakeholder expectations. In hindsight, this can be substantially explained from a complexity science perspective: ATM is simply too complex to address through classical approaches such as system engineering and human factors. In order to change this, complexity science has to be embraced as ATM's 'best friend'. The applicability of complexity science paradigms to the analysis and modelling of future operations is driven by the need to accommodate long-term air traffic growth within an already-saturated ATM infrastructure. Complexity Science in Air Traffic Management is written particularly, but not exclusively, for transport researchers, though it also has a complementary appeal to practitioners, supported through the frequent references made to practical examples and operational themes such as performance, airline strategy, passenger mobility, delay propagation and free-flight safety. The book should also have significant appeal beyond the transport domain, due to its intrinsic value as an exposition of applied complexity science and applied research, drawing on examples of simulations and modelling throughout, with corresponding insights into the design of new concepts and policies, and the understanding of complex phenomena that are invisible to classical techniques.