Title: Identification and empirical characterisation of flight arrival variation and the impact on departure punctuality

Authors: Jenaro Nosedal-Sánchez; Miquel Angel Piera-Eroles; Diederik Lebbink

Addresses: School of Administrative Studies, York University, Canada ' Technical Innovation Cluster on Aeronautical Management, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain ' PwC, Woluwe Garden Woluwedal 18B, 1932 Sint-Stevens-Woluwe, Belgium

Abstract: In this paper, based on field data from two years of operations at a European Airport, empirical evidence of the influence of arrival variation on departure delay flight for short scheduled ground times (i.e., up to 60 minutes) is revisited, including 'on time', 'early' and 'late' arrivals. For early and late arrivals, variation is measured together with the extension of the scheduled ground time, and the numbers of departure delay minutes recorded for the next departure are considered. Based on the results obtained, it is provided a quantitative method to identify the effects of early and late arrivals on airport operations, its magnitude is dependent of airport's dynamic factors such demand and capacity and its operational context. For the study case presented early arrivals are shown to generate higher airport operational disturbances compared with late arrivals that allow better reaction capacity to compensate with direct effects on turnaround time process.

Keywords: air transportation; departure punctuality; earliness impact; operational disturbances; delays; flight arrival variation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2020.105373

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2020 Vol.35 No.3, pp.307 - 320

Received: 11 Jul 2017
Accepted: 04 Dec 2017

Published online: 26 Feb 2020 *

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