SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS TO DETERMINE THE OPTIMISATION POTENTIAL OF AIRPORT TURNAROUND PROCESSES FOR SHORT-HAUL AIRCRAFTS

Abstract

In comparison to the flight time, the turnaround time at the airport has a higher percentage for short-haul flights than for medium and long-haul flights. Shortening the time for a short-haul aircraft staying on the ground offers a high potential for optimisation, which reduces both the travel time for passengers and the fleet expenditure of the airlines. It is assumed that the time for the turnaround solely on the land side, i.e. the time between in-block and off-block, can be shortened by at least 10% compared to the today’s reference turnaround process with specially designed processes for short distance flights and a respectively adapted aircraft configuration. This paper describes an initial sensitivity analysis of a turnaround model based on the reference turnaround process chain of the A320 aircraft family, which is frequently used on short distance routes. The sensitivity analysis explores relational level between input data represented by demand and available resources and output data represented by utilisation of resources and turnaround time. The main goal is to determine the processes with the most significant influence on the land side turnaround time of a short-haul aircraft. The investigation methodology and the input parameters are explained in detail. The reference process chain for the analysis of the optimisation potential is described. On the basis of the presented results upper and lower bound of resources limitation for the next step of the investigations are derived.