This study investigates cross-border commercial air passenger traffic in Africa, focusing on the development of the 15 busiest country pairs during the period 1989 to 2015. It explores dimensions not previously studied by using ICAO's 'Traffic by Flight Stage' (TFS) and data from the CEPII Gravity Dataset. The spatial results show on an uneven geographical distribution of country pairs with the centre of gravity to South, East and North-East Africa, with one long-distance corridor between Egypt and South Africa. Countries in North and West Africa have rather few linkages, except for Egypt. Central African countries are not represented among the 15 country pairs. Although the number of passengers and the rank among the countries have shifted, South Africa and Egypt stand out, as having most country pair connections. Factors such as changing economic, diplomatic and political relations have had an influence on changing country pair connections throughout the period. A number of variables were selected to investigate how they correlated with Africa's commercial passenger traffic. Of the seven variables selected, five did show on a correlation and two did partly so. In that view, Africa's air traffic follows rather typical patterns.
A survey of travellers was conducted at a major US airport. A computer-based questionnaire was administered during the daytime to 573 passengers at their departure gate seating areas in either a concourse with low-emissivity glass or a newly constructed concourse with electrochromic glass. Sample sizes and characteristics were comparable for respondents in the two concourses. In the concourse with electrochromic glass, window surface temperatures were significantly cooler and more spatially consistent, and passenger comfort with daylight and positive mood were significantly better; respondents were 68% more likely to report being very satisfied with their gate experience. Overall, results agree with previous research showing that the visual environment and visual experience for airline passengers is improved by using electrochromic glass at airport gates.
This paper looks at the key methodological and design insights gained from a five stage mixedmethods Delphi study investigating the global airline industry's likely future strategic trajectory.The exploratory study sequentially unfolded across a workshop, test/pilot survey, main survey 1, main survey 2, and finally in-depth interviews.The study revealed the important roles each stage played in gathering a wide array of salient data and informing subsequent stages and analysis.This research journey demonstrated the versatility available when mixing quantitative and qualitative methods in a Delphi study covering air transport, and how each can reinforce and complement the other.This is particularly relevant when investigating emerging air markets, where existing data is either limited or non-existent.Although a geographically dispersed multidisciplinary cohort of participants contributed to this study, more expert voices from underresearched emerging regions and air markets are evidently required for future research into this still expanding global industry.
A framework for aircraft downtime optimisation in a military squadron was proposed. Military squadron was considered as a production system, producing operational aircraft. Each working day that an aircraft is out of service is a defective product. A group of 30 aircraft was studied in order to determine the proportion of defectives. Laney P′ chart depicted that the aircraft maintenance performance was in control. Nevertheless, two aircraft had undergone to unusual downtime interval. For these aircraft, cannibalisation, waiting and repairing time was analysed with partial least square regression. Eight points came up as outliers and leverages. The analysis of these points revealed that airframe powerplant general (APG), communication/navigation, electrical and structure systems have undergone long waiting and repairing time, while recovery of fuel and electrical systems is downgraded by cannibalisation time. Incorporation of this methodology in aviation would strengthen the optimisation process of readiness, maintenance costs, quality, and safety.
Airlines are continuously working to enhance in-flight services to create a superior customer user experience. Flight attendants play an important role in the customers' travel experiences. Flight attendants have the most interaction with the passengers, which directly impacts the passenger's flight experience. The purpose of the present study is to assess the cultural differences of trust, if any, between Indians and US with respect to the age and gender of flight attendants. Analysing this aspect of trust is performed through manipulating the age and gender of the flight attendant. A cross cultural analysis comparing data from both Indian and US participants was conducted specifically asking participants to rate their levels of trust in flight attendants described as male or female and either 25 or 55 years of age. The results and the practical application of the study are discussed that resulted in useful findings for the aviation industry.
This study explores perspectives of airport management on aviation biofuels in the Pacific Northwest of the USA by administering an online survey of airport managers in FAA certified airports in the region. Respondents provided their opinions on factors important for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) development in the Pacific Northwest, including perceptions of various potential drivers and barriers to scale-up in the region. Most respondents indicated that policy certainty to attract capital, higher oil prices, and technology breakthroughs are required for a viable industry, and they also indicated that government intervention is important to ensure successful adoption and implementation. Respondents indicated that aviation biofuel tax credits, a system to issue and trade sustainable biofuel certificates, and fuel sustainability certification criteria are required policies/protocol to ensure viability. We suggest that a regional approach to examining barriers, drivers, and policy requirements provides more nuanced perspectives regarding key SAF development and scale-up issues.
We developed an analysis method of hazards related to air-traffic control (ATC). We used mixing approach procedures such as required navigation performance, authorisation required (RNP AR) and instrument landing system (ILS), as the test case. We carried out the hazard and operability (HAZOP) study and ATC real-time simulation experiments in the situation of the mixed operation for finding the hazards because we were not able to find them as the result of literature examination. We collected the data required for this analysis in the simulation experiment and selected HAZOP as the key assessment methodology. The hazard analysis method developed enables to perform a quantitative HAZOP analysis. We quantified the likelihood of accidents and the ratios between the hazard severities at the development stage. Furthermore, we discussed a safety index based on the statistics of recent catastrophic air accidents around the world. A safety index matrix showed the regions of acceptable levels with mitigation by a quantitative index value.
This paper analyses the operational efficiency of the big three Chinese airline carriers post deregulation from the managerial perspective, using empirical data and by means of parametric methods in order to further understand the potential this market has for its dominant carriers. The analysis uses financial and operational data for the three dominant carriers in the Chinese airline industry and estimates the effect deregulation has had over a period from 1994-2012 to the dominant carriers. This analysis validates that the Chinese airline industry operational efficiency as measured by revenue and cash flow generation ability is positively associated with the load factor within a period that includes deregulatory initiatives. This finding highlights that the airlines have reacted positively post deregulation and have reasonably coped with competitive forces. Thus a further airline industry convergence is expected, on a global scale. This convergence will positively affect the Chinese airline industry, which in turn will benefit the passengers in terms of technology innovation, prices and welfare status.
In this paper we present a review of existing aviation safety metrics and we lay the foundation for our four-years research project entitled "Measuring Safety in Aviation -Developing Metrics for Safety Management Systems".We reviewed state-of-the-art literature, relevant standards and regulations, and industry practice.We identified that the long-established view on safety as absence of losses has limited the measurement of safety performance to indicators of adverse events (e.g., accident and incident rates).However, taking into account the sparsity of incidents and accidents compared to the amount of aviation operations, and the recent shift from compliance to performance based approach to safety management, the exclusive use of outcomes metrics does not suffice to further improve safety and establish a proactive monitoring of safety performance.Although the academia and aviation industry have recognized the need to use activity indicators for evaluating how safety management processes perform, and various process metrics have been developed, those have not yet become part of safety performance assessment.This is partly attributed to the lack of empirical evidence about the relation between safety proxies and safety outcomes, and the diversity of safety models used to depict safety management processes (i.e.root-cause, epidemiological or systemic models).This, in turn, has resulted to the development of many safety process metrics, which, however, have not been thoroughly tested against the quality criteria referred in literature, such as validity, reliability and practicality.
This contribution adds recent empirical findings on airline passengers' preference structures, putting emphasis on the European short and medium-range leisure flight market. The conducted choice experiments specifically tackled the trade-off between the catering service levels and possible variations of air fares. Based on a segmentation of the continental leisure air market, ternary and binary choice situations – with/without consideration of the status quo offering - were created. Choice-based conjoint measurement and discrete choice analysis were deployed as evaluation techniques. The underlying data was generated by two waves of stated preference surveys of slightly varying questionnaire design. The results include new empirical evidence on part-worths and willingness-to-pay of airline passengers; analysis of onboard sales data and extensive choice experiments; choice-based conjoint measurement and discrete choice analysis; and a new compensatory choice model for the up-selling probability of in-flight services.
Airport management in Japan must pursue efficiency and transparency. This research focuses on the allocation scheme of aviation fuel tax to local governments as an original revenue source for airports. In view of governance, after reviewing the current practice and issues, we discuss a favourable model for promoting transparency, followed by tracing up the current officially-available figures to find out the allocation amounts for each airport of aviation fuel tax, we conduct trial calculations under several assumptions to reveal how changes to the allocation scheme affect the revenue source proportion for each airport. Based on the results, we conduct another trial calculation of the financial balance for state-owned airports and introduce an airport facility charge to clarify the tax scheme to show options for better airport management in Japan.
To enable the efficient operation of an airfield and the efficiency of timetable management it is necessary to develop a model that can measure and check the current timetable whether they meet the airfield operation performance. This study develops an optimisation mathematic planning model to formulate objective function of the taxi fuel cost and arrangement of arrival/departure time points for flights timetable within one peak hour. Results show the average taxiing cost and taxiing time for per flight will be 351.25 US dollars and 8.7–19.15 minutes. If pilots control the speed at 15-35 kilometre/hour, the total minimum taxiing time of 20 flights can be decreased to 161–186 minutes. If the pilots use runway 5L to take off/land, it can save 1,299 US dollars in one hour. The interval length of time points at timetable is suggested to be five minutes for easy management and control.
