Influence of tower air traffic controller workload and airport layout on airport capacity

Paola Di Mascio, Riccardo Carrara, Luca Frasacco, Eleonora Luciano, Andrea Ponziani and Laura Moretti
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Paola Di Mascio: Associate Professor at Department of Civil Building and Environmental Engineering, University of Rome, Italy
Riccardo Carrara: Civil Engineer in the Department of Civil Building and Environmental Engineering, University of Rome, Italy
Luca Frasacco: ENAV (Ente Nazionale Assistenza al Volo), Italy
Eleonora Luciano: ENAV (Ente Nazionale Assistenza al Volo), Italy
Andrea Ponziani: Head of Airport Enhanced Solutions at ENAV Ente Nazionale Assistenza al Volo-Italian Air Navigation Service Provider via Salaria, Italy
Laura Moretti: Department of Civil Environmental and Building Engineering, University of Rome, Italy

Journal of Airport Management, 2021, vol. 15, issue 4, 408-423

Abstract: Air traffic control’s aim is to optimise airport capacity, that is, to increase the number of aircraft movements per hour maintaining a limited delay. There are several definitions of capacity, which depend on the considered airport element. This study focused on the development of a method that allows evaluating the impact of tower air traffic controllers’ workload on airport capacity. It adapts a model for the workload of sector controllers designed by Eurocontrol to tower controllers and tests it on a heavily busy international airport. In order to collect controllers’ working times, a campaign on data research has been carried out from which it was possible to extrapolate the hourly percentage of work of the various tower controllers using a fast-time simulation software. By imposing an hourly working threshold on tower air traffic controllers, it was possible to obtain a maximum number of manageable aircraft, which was compared with the airside capacity of the airport. The results show that the maximum traffic manageable from the airside would produce unacceptable workload for tower controllers, highlighting the link between airport capacity and human component.

Keywords: airport capacity; fast-time simulation; aircraft delay simulation models; Pareto frontiers; workload; tower air traffic controller; air traffic controller’s capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 M10 R4 R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jam000:y:2021:v:15:i:4:p:408-423

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