The Benefit of Innovative Taxi Concepts: The Impact of Airport Size, Fleet Mix and Traffic Growth

Abstract

Increasing environmental awareness of the public, tightening of legislation regarding environment protection, along with a steady growth of traffic and rising oil prices are the main drivers the aviation industry has to deal with. Moreover, congested maneuvering areas and the impossibility to expand challenge the large airports in particular. Therefore, great effort has to be spent by airports and airlines to optimize ground operations under the given conditions. The taxi phase of a mission came into focus, recently, as it offers a great potential of fuel and emissions reduction. This paper discusses the impact of innovative taxi concepts, such as Electric Taxi, TaxiBot, Single Engine Taxi and operational improvements by the use of surface managers (SMAN). The goal is to estimate the potential of these four concepts under the operational conditions of selected airports. The forecasted growth of air traffic as well as expected aircraft fleet changes over the next years at the respective airports will also be taken into account.