Reducing Auxiliary Power Unit Reliance through Decision-Sufficient Information: A Game-Theoretic Framework for Airport Gate Electrification

Muhammad Shajid Shahriar and Jasenka Rakas

Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley

Abstract: When parked at airport gates, commercial aircraft need electricity and conditioned air to power avionics, lighting, cabin services, and passenger comfort. Aircraft typically use an auxiliary power unit (APU), a small gas-turbine engine located at the rear of the aircraft that burns jet fuel as a power source. Ground power (GP) and preconditioned air (PCA) can reduce auxiliary power unit (APU) use during aircraft turnaround, but their availability alone does not ensure adoption. Reliability, coordination, timing and perceived delay risk can make continued APU reliance a rational airline response. This study develops a game-theoretic framework that links diagnosis of persistent APU reliance to the evidence needed for airport intervention. Each airline–gate pair is represented as a two-player airport–airline game. Four information packages are ordered by expected acquisition burden, with decision sufficiency defined as preserving both the equilibrium classification and selected intervention obtained under a full-information benchmark. Two synthetic demonstrations illustrate the framework. The first evaluates baseline equilibria and one-at-a-time intervention thresholds across 16 airline–gate pairs. Fourteen pairs initially remained in a weak-support/APU equilibrium. Coordination improvement shifted six pairs toward strong support and GP/PCA use, the broadest response among the five tested interventions. Equipment reliability had the smallest mean positive threshold among successfully shifted pairs. Intervention responses varied across pairs, with the broadest lever shifting 37.5% of all pairs within the tested range, supporting a pair-specific approach to intervention selection. The second demonstration uses 60 synthetic operation-style records across the same 16 pairs to illustrate bottleneck diagnosis and candidate-response mapping. Weak economic incentives relative to operational risk were the dominant modeled constraint for 10 pairs. Together, the demonstrations motivate a staged pathway that begins with existing operational records and adds technical or strategic evidence when needed to clarify intervention choice. The framework establishes a structured basis for targeted information acquisition and provides a pathway for empirical evaluation of decision-sufficient stopping packages, acquisition costs, and operational effectiveness.

Keywords: Engineering; Airport gate electrification; Auxiliary power units; Ground power; Game theory; Decision-sufficient information; Targeted information acquisition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10-01
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