SubscribeHow To Manage Gate Capacity At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol?
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the largest European hubs. Currently, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol handles over 48 million passengers annually. For the next years, the airport foresees a further increase in traffic. To accommodate this traffic, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol capacity managers are using Samanta to assess bottlenecks, to optimise available capacity and to determine the capacity requirements in the future. To determine the required gate capacity in the future, Schiphol uses Samanta GateCapacityManager®.
Simulating Airports
Airports have experienced a rapid growth over the last decades with yearly increases in number of flights, passengers and traffic. As a result, airports become more and more congested and from time to time capacities may seem to be insufficient.
At terminal level this may lead to passenger dissatisfaction due to delays and waiting times at check in counters, passport control and security checks. Outside the terminal, aircraft punctuality can become lower, due to delays at airports.
Accordingly, long term investments in airport expansions or improvements have to be made. These in turn require a solid support to determine the required capacities, such as the number of check in counters and security controls, the sorting capacity of a baggage handling system, and the number of gates and remote aircraft stands.
At the same time, the daily operations have to be controlled and anticipated for in the best possible way to account for peaks and bottlenecks. Insights in and quantitative support for operational improvements are thus required. Samanta is being developed with exactly this in mind: a powerful airport simulation and capacity management tool, that can analyse parts of an airport, but if necessary even entire airports.
Samanta
Samanta - Simulation Application for Modeling and ANalysis of a Total Airport - provides quantitative insight in the current and future capacity requirements, while maintaining a high service level and minimizing the cost. Samanta can evaluate individual airport processes, but also the relation between different processes. Samanta can be used to validate and analyze long-term developments, and assess bottlenecks, capacity allocation and personnel planning issues in day-to-day operation.
Samanta is designed and developed in close cooperation between Incontrol Enterprise Dynamics and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
- Operational decision making on the short term (0-1 years), for example a quick analysis of the season forecasts, influence of work on the platforms and of disturbances in the operation.
Benefits for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
- Optimization of internal processes without expensive investments in capacity extension.
- Possibility to decide about just-in-time investments in capacity. Investments can be done when it is really required, this will keep the visit costs as low as possible.
- Possibility of integral analysis by using the GateCapacityManager in combination with already existing baggage and passenger simulation models.
To realize reduction of visit costs, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol wants to accommodate a growing number of aircraft movements while minimizing the investments in gate capacity. This requires an efficient management of airport processes. Design and use of infrastructure is an important issue! The GateCapacityManager makes it possible to analyze these capacity issues in a quick and easy way.
How the Gate Capacity Manager Works
The GateCapacityManager makes use of a flight schedule for a certain day and the available capacity of stands. Based on a user defined rule set, the GateCapacityManager assigns the flights to the available stands.
It evaluates all rules in priority order (requirement, preference, avoidance) and assigns flights to stands with the highest possible score. The resulting gate planning can be represented in a Gantt Chart or in Excel graphs.
The GateCapacityManager works together with other Samanta modules like the PaxBaxGenerator and the passenger simulator PaxSim. This makes is possible to evaluate the influence of a certain gate planning on passenger and baggage flows.
Other Samanta Modules
Samanta is an airport simulation and capacity management application. The Gate Capacity Manager is one of the Samanta modules. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is also using other modules. The modules can be used independently, but also in combination with each other.
This means that the results of the GateCapacityManager can be used directly by - for example - the passenger flow models (Paxsim module) and the baggage system and process models (Baxsim module).
Samanta will be developed continuously. The next generation will be based on the current concept. Current modules will be enhanced, and new modules will be developed. This will lead to a total airport simulation and analysis tool where all the conceivable processes can be investigated.
Samanta contains a database with airport data including a flow generator for passengers and baggage. The data can be analyzed used for capacity management purposes, for instance to compare the available capacity with expected flows. The same data can also be used in simulation models. The results of simulations are often more detailed than static analyses and provide a better understanding of interacting processes. The results of simulations can be stored again in the airport data, and exported to graphs for further analysis and presentation purposes.
Samanta Gate Capacity Manager
Is today’s infrastructure sufficient to facilitate tomorrow’s flights? Is it possible to use the existing infrastructure in a more efficient way? These and more questions can be answered with Samanta’s GateCapacityManager. The tool is not a day-to-day gate planning tool, but is used for analysis of current and future gate capacity.
Joyce Groot, capacity manager atAmsterdam Airport Schiphol, started in the Summer of 2006 with the GateCapacityManager. The operational Gate Planning system is too complex to quickly evaluate changes in planning rules. The Samanta GateCapacityManager is an easy to use gate allocation tool that gives insight in the required number of gates and remote positions, now and in the future.
Objective
The GateCapacityManager has been developed in close cooperation with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The GateCapacityManager supports Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in decisions about the capacity of gates and remote aircraft position (stands) and the use in daily operation. Decisions about extensions, adjustments and other use of stands can be supported at different levels:
- Strategic decision making on the long term (5-20 years), for example decisions about new piers and platforms, allocation of carrier segments in certain areas.
- Tactical decision making on mid term (1-5 years), for example decisions about investments in extensions or adjustments within the current infrastructure. Or analyzing the impact of changes in allocation rules.
