Air transport is a continually expanding industry, a fact that has become even more evident with the recovery of the aviation industry post-COVID-19. This expansion amplified energy consumption at airports, which was already significantly high. Airport decision-makers are increasingly focusing on improving sustainability and addressing social, economic, and environmental criteria across airports worldwide. In this article, we propose a decision-making model for identifying a sustainable airport technology solution that minimizes the energy consumption of airport lighting while considering...
As aviation demand continues to increase in the post-COVID-19 era, the risk of incidents and accidents in aircraft operations at airport airfields has increased. Large hub airports often contain multiple runways connected to the apron area using a complex system of taxiways. As a result, an increased risk of incidents has been appearing in certain parts of these complex taxiway systems, which are defined as airport taxiway hotspots. While a list of taxiway hotspots at U.S. airports exists to support and alleviate concerns for pilots and ground personnel, the methodology for determining...
This study introduces a logistic regression-based stress level metric to (1) assess stress levels of Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) and pilots, and (2) detect off-nominal events using audio-derived features. With over 16,264 labeled ATC-pilot utterances and scalar and multi-dimensional speech attributes, it is demonstrated that a developed Stress Score metric can capture meaningful distinctions between the nominal and off-nominal utterances. The Beta distribution fit further captures the skewed nature of Stress Scores, indicating that the model follows a non-linear but quantifiable pattern...
Airports are a critical component of the civil infrastructure system, serving as the main entry and exit points for both people and goods. Aircraft operations on airfields are monitored by personnel working at airport air traffic control (ATC) towers. These ground-based traffic controllers deliver advisory services and flight data documentation. Advances in surveillance systems by means of radio, image, and acoustic-based technologies have emerged to help airports monitor aircraft operations on airfields. These systems can provide personnel at control towers with additional information...
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...
This paper critically examines the Airport Master Plan for Lexington Blue Grass (LEX) Airport (located in the state of Kentucky) as a response to its airport authority's concerns about the projected capacity shortfalls and related congestion and delays. The existing Master Plan proposed several configuration alternatives (including the addition of a 9,000-foot parallel runway) and would require purchasing land in the vicinity of the airport. In the analysis of future capacity at the airport, simulation models are developed to analyze measures of performance such as capacity and delay...
Reliability of the air transportation system heavily depends on the performance of communication, navigation, and surveillance facilities in the National Airspace System (NAS). These facilities are prone to outages caused by convective weather, such as lightning. Current lightning safety standards and risk assessments focus solely on lightning occurrence and omit the effect of lightning intensity from hazard characterization. We propose methods that incorporate lightning intensity and occurrence parameters to better understand the impact of lightning strike on the NAS using the National...
This paper develops a methodology for examining the airport airside operational performance, during unscheduled equipment outage, under the assumption that air traffic control procedures are used to compensate for the lack of available navigational equipment.
This study explores dynamic behavior of an airport system by investigating changes in airport primary runway configurations and their intermediate transitions.
Over 2500 airports worldwide provide critical infrastructure that supports 4 billion annual passengers. To meet changes in capacity and post-COVID-19 passenger processing, airport infrastructure such as terminal buildings, airfields, and ground service equipment require substantial upgrades. Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but that estimate excludes airport construction and operation. Metrics that assess an airport’s sustainability, in addition to environmental impacts that are sometimes unaccounted for (e.g. water consumption), are necessary for a more...
