Improved airport operations planning by using tailored forecasts of severe weather

Abstract

At airports Stakeholders, like ANSP, airport authority, ground service provider and airlines are driven by different goals. Therefore they very often just focus on their own processes and do not coordinate with other Stakeholders. That results in missing information, installation of buffer times and a lack of alignment. The new concept of a Performance Based Airport Management (PBAM) introduces Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to manage the processes and requires the involvement of all Stakeholders. As one enabler for PBAM pre-tactical planning of airport processes is identified. Particularly disruptive for the daily airport business are weather events like thunderstorms or snow fall and freezing rain. Today impacts on the operations are awaited but mostly not considered in pre-tactical planning (timeframe up to day of ops) of operational processes. Often, the present meteorological services do not meet the needs of operators at an airport or the delivered products are not specific enough. The disruptive impact of adverse weather on an airport could however be mitigated by using dedicated and tailored observations and forecasts of weather and integrating them into the information sharing and decision making processes. Through a reliable and robust weather forecast air traffic can be operationally influenced much earlier and necessary decisions can be initiated.