Forecasting aircraft stand requirements

The aim of this thesis is to obtain from a simulation procedure a set of graphs to compute the number of aircraft stands required at an airport. The scope of the study has been set within airports from the size of that of Birmingham up to those of the size of Manchester. A general approach has been taken hoping that the graphs may be used in the case of similar airports within the range. A computer model is developed to compute stand requirements for 5 aircraft groups under 4 aircraft mixes and 5 flight type mixes. The basic input variables taken into account in the model are aircraft arrival time and stand occupancy time. The model simulates the apron under three handling rules, the first one being that of stands mutually shared amongst the aircraft groups, the second without stands sharing and the last case for stands being partially shared. With outputs from the simulation procedure a number of graphs are plotted with arrivals per hour as the independent variable and stands required as the dependent variable. The graphs are split into 4 groups according to the aircraft mixes.