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An important and challenging question for air transportation regulators and airport operators is the definition and specification of airport capacity. Annual capacity is used for long-term planning purposes as a degree of available service volume, but it poses several inefficiencies when measuring the true throughput of the system because of seasonal and daily variations of traffic. Instead, airport throughput is calculated or estimated for a short period of time, usually one hour. This brings about a mismatch: air traffic forecasts typically yield annual volumes, whereas capacity is measured on hourly figures. To manage the right balance between airport capacity and demand, annual traffic volumes must be converted into design hour volumes, so that they can be compared with the true throughput of the system. This comparison is a cornerstone in planning new airport infrastructures, as design-period parameters are important for airport planners in anticipating where and when congestion occurs. Although the design hour for airport traffic has historically had a number of definitions, it is necessary to improve the way air traffic design hours are selected. This study aims to provide an empirical analysis of airport capacity and demand, specifically focusing on insights related to air traffic design hours and the relationship between capacity and delay.

By reviewing the empirical relationships between hourly and annual air traffic volumes and between practical capacity and delay at 50 European airports during the period 2004–2021, this paper discusses the problem of defining a suitable peak hour for capacity evaluation purposes. The authors use information from several data sources, including EUROCONTROL, ACI and OAG. This study provides functional links between design hours and annual volumes for different airport clusters. Additionally, the authors appraise different daily traffic distribution patterns and their variation by hour of the day.

The clustering of airports with respect to their capacity, operational and traffic characteristics allows us to discover functional relationships between annual traffic and the percentage of traffic in the design hour. These relationships help the authors to propose empirical methods to derive expected traffic in design hours from annual volumes. The main conclusion is that the percentage of total annual traffic that is concentrated at the design hour maintains a predictable behavior through a “potential” adjustment with respect to the volume of annual traffic. Moreover, the authors provide an experimental link between capacity and delay so that peak hour figures can be related to factors that describe the quality of traffic operations.

The functional relationships between hourly and annual air traffic volumes and between capacity and delay, can be used to properly assess airport expansion projects or to optimize resource allocation tasks. This study offers new evidence on the nature of airport capacity and the dynamics of air traffic design hours and delay.

Given the ever-growing air travel industry, there is an increasing strain on the systems that provide safe flights. Different methods have to be adopted to help to cope with the increasing demand, especially in Southeast Asia. The purpose of this study is to sectorise one existing airspace to better manage sector workloads.

Cambodia’s airspace was chosen for this study because it had only one sector and it was quickly approaching its limit. In this paper, after characterising the airspace, it was first bi-partitioned using the spectral clustering algorithm. The weights of the resulting subgraphs were then balanced through a weight-balancing algorithm. Also, a post-processing algorithm established the sector boundary to be drawn. The method was first carried out on one test airspace. Following the successful sectorisation of the test airspace, the actual Cambodian airspace was sectorised. The resulting two new sectors were then calculated to be able to last for approximately five years before they would reach their capacity. Hence, a further sectorisation was carried out. This resulted in four sectors, which were projected to last more than 10 years.

The method produced satisfactory results. The methodology presented is proven to be effective in achieving the sectorisation. The workloads of the new sectors obtained are balanced, and the sector boundaries are at least 15 km away from the air routes and nodes. The methodology is also general and can be applied to different scenarios. This means that applications to other airspace in the region are possible, which can further help to increase the safety, efficiency and capacity of the air traffic movement in this region.

This paper presents one of the approaches for airspace sector designs. The problems are clearly presented with references. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of subdividing airspace and the need to sectorise Cambodia’s airspace, and present a method to solve the sectorisation problem. It is very precious to apply methodologies and algorithms to real cases. The presented method offers significant advantages such as the ease of implementation and efficiency. The problems can easily be solved using standard linear algebra algorithms. Instead of looking at the airspace as a whole, and generating new sector boundaries, our algorithm uses current sector boundaries and bisects them. Moreover, only sectors that require sectorisation would be affected. This algorithm has the advantage of maintaining the current sector boundaries to prevent radical changes to daily operations. The Voronoi diagram used in this work does not generate polygonal cells. It instead calculates the area based on pixels. The advantage of doing this is that it offers higher flexibility. Also, the sector boundary is generated based on straight lines calculated by joining the midpoints of links. This is simple and ensures that sections of the sector boundary are made up of straight, distinct lines. The authors also discuss the problems of the method and presented solutions to them.

Based on our experience related to the passenger terminal re-design at Sydney airport and its impact on belly-hold freight chains at the airport, this chapter takes a more general view on managing freight chains at large international airports. We aim to review literature and documents related to this area and also to undertake a fleet/traffic analysis of the 100 largest multi-function airports (when measured in terms of scheduled cargo traffic) to get a better understanding of current practice, particularly in the light of potential conflicts or benefits of the joint production of passenger and freight services. While most literature has focused on hub-and-spoke aspects of international hubs, relatively little has been done on economies of scale and scope of passenger and freight airline operations (including timing) at such hubs. This chapter explores to what extent terminal organisation of international airports impacts on the use of dedicated freighter of combination airlines and hence airline efficiency. A key finding in terms of airline efficiency is that economies of scale of air cargo operation appear to exist at the aircraft level as dedicated freighters are used more often if a sufficient threshold of air freight demand is observed at the airport level.

It is demonstrated how an analysis of airports’ cost structures and the calculation of long-run marginal costs (MCs) of serving passengers and airplanes can be used as a basis for setting airport charges according to the principles of welfare economics. Based on Norwegian data, the MC for an extra passenger (PAX) and extra air traffic movement (ATM) are used to set airport charges under the assumption that the charges should be equal for all airports in the country. When adjusting the estimates to meet revenue restrictions and comparing the estimates to current charges, we observe that PAX should be charged more and ATM less. This finding is in line with recommendations from the International Air Transport Association (IATA). When allowing charges to vary between airports, we demonstrate how a Ramsey pricing approach can be applied to set differentiated PAX and ATM charges, considering both the supply side (the competitive conditions between the airlines operating at the airports) and the demand side (the passengers’ price elasticity of demand).

A combined answer to the question in the title was given by speakers from several countries as well as Eurocontrol and NATO, at this conference organized by the Royal Aeronautical Society. An introduction to the various programmes came from the ECAC Chairman who is also Director General of the Danish Civil Aviation Administration. The ventures are the Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU), the European Air Traffic Control Harmonization and Integration Programme (EATCHIP), and the Airports/Air Traffic System Interface (APATSI). These ventures were conceived and launched by Eurocontrol (except for certain parts of APATSI).

The Spanish airport system contains several regional airports within an amenity distance and alternative travel modes. Profitable airports cross-subsidise small airports, which are not required for regional development or connectivity. Airports are government-owned and centralised-managed by Spanish Airports and Air Navigation (AENA, for its Spanish acronym). This study aims to analyse the probability of an under-used public infrastructure and the AENA’s managerial ability as per the financial sustainability of the network in the long term.

The national regulatory framework determines the airports’ environment. Six airports revealed unobserved heterogeneity, avoiding model misspecification. The framework is defined through proxies of the singularities of the Spanish framework: public investments and geographical specifications. The stochastic frontier analysis model follows two time-varying specifications, accounting for airports’ environmental factors, to ensure the robustness of the results to differ from the inefficiency caused by AENA and external factors.

Airports’ infrastructure capacity and traffic are not correlated; regional airports become a financial burden for the system unless they specialise or differentiate. Proxies defining the airports’ context are relevant. Because airports do not compete for airlines and passengers, there are too many regional airports with little traffic, resulting in disused public infrastructure that falls far short of improving connectivity and regional development.

This study contributes to paying attention to the characteristics of the regulatory framework, such as management strongly centralised in AENA, airport charges decided by the owner, lack of competition and lack of an independent regulatory entity. Another original contribution considers reliable capital measures (airports’ infrastructure).

This chapter provides an overview of the current political regulations on aviation’s climate relevant emissions in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and of the planned regulations in other parts of the world. In a next step, the cost impacts of most of these regulations on air freight will be quantified. This way, the economic impacts of environmental regulations on air freight can be estimated.

The main results indicate that cost impacts on air freight services induced by political measures for the reduction of aviation’s climate relevant emissions turn out to be small. This is true for both local emission charges on nitrous oxide (NO _X ) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions which are in force at a number of European airports and the European emissions trading scheme for the limitation of CO₂ emissions.

This chapter examines the torsions and blind spots that structure the contemporary debate on the politics and policy of aviation. It also generates different scenarios for the future of air travel, which can help to unblock the current impasse about the perceived costs and benefits of aviation and its attendant infrastructural needs.

This chapter characterises and evaluates the competing frames that organise the contested realities of air transport. By mapping out the current fault lines of aviation politics and policy, the chapter is also able to delineate four main scenarios regarding the future of aviation, which we name the ‘post-carbon’, ‘high-modernist’, ‘market regulation’ and ‘demand management’ projections respectively.

The chapter problematises and criticises the existing literature, policy reports and stakeholder briefings that inform the contemporary standoff in UK aviation policy. It uses the definition of sustainable development as a heuristic device to map and identify the fault lines structuring contemporary debates on aviation futures. It then builds upon this analysis to delimit four different scenarios for the future of flying.

The chapter analyses the contested realities of aviation politics. It re-affirms the political nature of such divisions, which in turn structure the rival understandings of aviation. The analysis suggests that the identified fault lines are constantly reiterated by competing appeals to ambiguous and contradictory evidence-bases or policy frames. Ultimately, the chapter claims that any significant reframing of aviation policy and politics rests on the outcome of political negotiations and persuasion. But it also depends on the broader views of citizens and stakeholders about the future challenges facing society, as well as the way in which governments and affected agents put in place and coordinate the multiple arenas in which a dialogue over the future of aviation can be held. Aviation futures cannot be reduced to the narrow confines of the technical merits or claims surrounding the feasibility of policy instruments.