Key Airport Efficiency Initiatives

You know how the first flight of the day tends to be on time, and the last flights of the day tend to be quite late? In Europe last summer, 60% of flights failed to depart on time ? on their 2nd rotation of the day!

Europe is hardly alone.

Delays stateside are not winning any prizes: Airinsight has two recent stories on how much time is wasted:

Here's one. And another:

Looking back at 2023, we estimate the US airline industry saw over $8Bn in extra operating costs from arrivals that were 15 minutes (or more) late. In 2023, 21.7% of flights arrived late; we estimate the industry averaged $122/minute in operating costs. Every 1% of savings the Optimate project delivers is worth over $80 million per year in US airline operations.

Aircraft are being delayed on the ground.

Airlines are increasingly getting an understanding of the threats of delays – and opportunities to be had - from the passage of time. Time saved on the ground is time in the air. Which is, in turn, revenue.

And the issue is only becoming more important, and recognized in the industry. Here is a brief summary of some recent news:

The industry lobby, IATA, is pushing improved safety on the ground:

Safety is IATA’s top priority, with the association highlighting the three areas of reducing ground damage by upgrading fleets to enhanced GSE [ground service equipment], using data to enhance injury prevention, and the mitigation of loading errors. ... Commenting on ground damage, Mejstrikova said this could be $10 billion annually by 2035, saying: “A key mitigation measure is the adoption of Enhanced GSE to make the ramp a safer place for both personnel and aircraft. This has the potential to reduce ground damage costs by 42%.”

While many others are trying to find ways to speed things up.

AI is being used to try to speed up control towers - here is a neat story on it.

American Airlines is working on something similar.

[American] started testing the intelligent gating technology at the airline’s largest hub in 2021. Since then, Smart Gating has helped American shorten aircraft taxi times at DFW by 20 percent or about two minutes per flight. Those minutes add up — at DFW, Smart Gating has helped American reduce the amount of time its aircraft spend taxiing by more than 11 hours each day.

ADB Safegate are working to improve things at the gate and beyond.

Using Safedock A-VDGS, the study demonstrated an 88 percent reduction in hold time, also resulting in a 20 percent decrease in safety incidents. Moreover, the implementation of Intelligent AiPRON resulted in a 30 percent reduction in turnaround time, which was also observed in a major European airport, where it was shown that the solution saved 240 minutes of turnaround time daily.

Remember that time is money! Boeing's own estimates are that cutting ten minutes per flight cycle adds 200 more flights per year. For context, the average A320/737 airline aircraft spends about 90 minutes on the ground, touchdown to takeoff during the flying day.

Airports themselves are innovating:

Eindhoven Airport (EIN) has begun using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to further improve its aircraft turnaround process and minimise delays, with help from Schiphol Airport. The improved process uses Deep Turnaround, a series of cameras situated on the apron to automatically detect the start and end times of ground handling processes, making turnaround times more predictable and giving advanced visibility for when an aircraft is ready to push.

And even Airbus is getting involved!

Airbus Public Safety and Security has officially launched?Agnet Turnaround?for?airport and ground handlers, a new innovative smart?and secure collaborative platform to address the complexities of ground operations. The announcement was made at?the?Passenger Terminal Expo in Frankfurt.

Airbus is working on more than just the turnaround: they want to speed up taxi operations as well - through a parallel organization:

Airbus is trying to advance a better way to taxi airplanes. This is NOT competition for WheelTug, as their solution is about automating decision-making to try to reduce accidents and incidents and pilot workload – not about actually moving the plane.

Automated gate-to-gate taxiing is an obvious aviation need. Aircraft use autopilots in the air, but taxiing today has virtually no automation!

Sooner or later, it should be clear that automated aircraft movement requires an on-board powered solution for taxiing forward and backward.

All of these initiatives are good ideas. Ground operations can be done better. But ultimately the chokepoint ends up being how many aircraft are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. Here is DFW at the moment I am writing this paragraph:

WheelTug helps! Allowing aircraft to spin in the gate space, instead of in the taxiway, blocking traffic... we are much needed!

Time is money. AirInsight:

For the US, we estimate the airline industry’s operating costs at $117 per minute.” (This does not include the passenger time value.)

What happens if you can save 7 or more minutes each flight? Keep in mind that in 2023, the average profit per passenger was about $2.00 - less than $290 per flying 737/A320. 7 minutes saved @ $117 is, as they say, "Real Money."