Analysis and modeling of airport surface operations

The focus of research in air traffic control has traditionally been on the airborne flight phase. Recently, increasing the efficiency of surface operations has been recognized to have significant potential benefits in terms of fuel and emissions savings. To identify opportunities for improvement and to quantify the consequent gains in efficiency, it is necessary to characterize current operational practices. This thesis describes a framework for analysis of airport surface operations and proposes metrics to quantify operational performance. These metrics are then evaluated for Boston Logan International Airport using actual surface surveillance data. A probabilistic model for real-time prediction of aircraft taxi-out times is described, which improves upon the accuracy of previous models based on queuing theory and regression. Finally, a regression model for estimation of aircraft taxi-out fuel burn is described. Together, the modules described here form the basis for a surface operations optimization tool that is currently under development.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Khadilkar, Harshad (Harshad Dilip)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hamsa Balakrishnan.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67187

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/67187