Across the world, millions of passengers, aircraft, and bags travel through airports every day. The modern airport is a complex ecosystem that depends on efficient airport planning to ensure its operations run smoothly,
Each phase of airport planning — capacity planning, budgeting, forecasting, short-term operational planning, and real-time optimization — plays a critical role in balancing capacity with demand, ensuring a seamless passenger experience, and responding to disruptions in real time.
In this article, we’ll cover what airport planning is, the three phases of airport planning, and why efficient planning matters for the modern airport.
Airport planning, or long-term operational planning, is the foundation of decision-making in the modern airport. It’s the process of designing and managing an airport’s infrastructure, services, and operations to ensure it meets future demands efficiently. The goal of airport planning is to create detailed plans that may still be adjusted on the day of operations.
The practice of airport planning involves a comprehensive approach that considers everything from physical space and resource allocation to regulatory compliance, staffing and operational efficiency.
Key aspects of airport planning include:
Airport planning is divided into three phases: forecasting, planning, and real-time optimization. Each phase is crucial in developing airports that can handle evolving transportation needs.
The capacity planning typically looks 2-10 years into the future whereas the forecasting phase takes place anywhere between 14 days and 365 days in advance. The goal of forecasting is to predict future demand for air travel, including the number of passengers, aircraft movements, cargo volumes, number of bags, and operational requirements.
Forecasting takes into account factors such as:
Forecasting uses statistical models, simulation tools, and machine learning algorithms to predict future needs. In doing so, it helps determine long-term infrastructure investments like runway extensions, terminal expansions, and parking facilities.
Within our airport management software, we offer a forecasting tool to help you predict and optimize the different flows in your airport.
Planning, or short-term operational planning, typically focuses on the next 24-72 hours, but can extend up to a week. This phase takes input from the forecasting phase, where passenger and bag volumes, flight schedules, and other relevant factors are predicted, and translates those forecasts into actionable plans for the immediate future.
The goal of the planning phase is to ensure that the airport can meet the predicted short-term demands and maximize operational efficiency.
Key tasks in the planning phase include:
The planning phase involves tight coordination between airlines, airport authorities, air traffic control, and ground services to ensure that every aspect of airport operations flows seamlessly.
Better Airport enables efficient planning based on historical data, so you can allocate resources optimally.
Real-time optimization is the final phase of airport planning and focuses on managing airport operations as efficiently as possible in real time. This includes managing aircraft arrivals and departures, passenger flow, baggage handling, and ground services.
In the real-time optimization phase, advanced systems such as artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are used for optimizing gate allocations, staffing, and passenger wait times.
Integrated airport management systems are crucial for real-time optimization. They allow for informed decision-making and real-time adjustments based on factors like weather conditions, traffic congestion, and flight delays. They also help to reduce bottlenecks at security checkpoints, improve boarding procedures, and enhance the overall passenger experience.
With the ever-increasing demand for efficient air transportation of passengers and cargo alike, the importance of efficient airport planning grows more prominent every day.
Each of the three phases covered above is crucial because they’re highly interdependent. Any breakdown in one phase can create a ripple effect throughout the entire system:
Each phase influences the others, making seamless coordination across all three phases crucial for maintaining sustainable airport operations and handling increased traffic without causing delays or wasting resources in the process.
Staff and passengers alike rely on each phase in the airport planning process to run smoothly. For that reason, connected operations are crucial across every area of airport operations.
Traditionally, airport operations are conducted in silos. Areas within the various operations are operated separately, making it difficult for areas to optimize and adapt dynamically to real-time changes. To optimize operations in the modern airport, their core operations can no longer be conducted in silos: they must be connected.
For this exact purpose, Copenhagen Optimization has developed Better Airport®: a cloud-based airport management SaaS platform that gives all airports, regardless of size, a simpler way to run core operations. It’s the solution that allows you to forecast accurately, plan efficiently, and execute confidently.
As a common operating platform, the system enables everyone you collaborate with, internally and externally, to easily access and use all functionality. Featuring nine core modules for airport optimization, Better Airport allows airports to mix and match modules to create a solution perfectly suited to the specific needs of the individual airport.
Every module can be connected, making it easy to forecast, understand, and plan passenger and baggage flows throughout the airport. We call this way of working Connected Operations — and we believe it’s the future of airport operations.
Read more about Better Airport® here.
Imagine an airport where your operations are connected; an airport where you can precisely predict your passenger and baggage flows, use data to plan with confidence and clarity, and optimize your operations in real-time. At Copenhagen Optimization, we want to help you achieve just that.