Airport Availability Modelling: A Different Perspective

This study proposes a systems-level approach to airport and runway availability assessments and prediction, and addresses the problem of the aging or continuously degrading aviation infrastructure. Although the availability block diagrams are often used in the availability assessment of aerospace and electronic systems, their application to the airport availability problem on a system level, developed in this study, is novel. The proposed methodology is intended for short-term and long-term planning of the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) equipment acquisition, and investment and modernisation decisions. A better understanding of the effects of equipment outages on airport availability is important in determining a required level of airport equipage and equipment reliability, particularly during critical operating conditions, such as bad weather and increased traffic demand. With proposed methodology, an analyst can precisely quantify the additional level of airport availability achieved by upgrading or adding new pieces of CNS equipment.