Apron performance improvements

Airport: Luxembourg Airport, Luxembourg (EU).

Client: lux-Airport, Aerodrome Operator.

The aerodrome operator was seeking apron management measures to minimize delay for arriving aircrafts in reaching their stands.

Arriving passenger aircrafts are routed to their stands by a Follow-Me. It’s the procedure. Firstly, because P1 is a tight and busy apron, therefore the aircraft need to be guided to the stand. Second, dense heavy fog i.e., low visibility conditions are frequent at the airport, thus the Low Visibility Procedures (LVP), are initiated quite often as well.  Under the LVP, aircraft avail the Follow-Me service as part of LVP procedure. 

After landing, the tower control routes the aircraft to one of the two waiting points at the

entry to the P1, the tightly run passenger apron at the airport with remote and contact stands. From there a Follow-Me vehicle routes the aircraft to its stand.

During peak period, the aircraft arrival rate increases, often resulting in buildup of a small queue of aircrafts at the waiting point. P1 is also sees ground-traffic of freight vehicles from P5 the airport’s cargo apron, airside vehicles, and passenger buses. All combined, the apron gets quite busy. 

Problem statement being unique to LUX, proposed solution was conceptualizing and creating a model tailor-made to the airport.

The model output presented optimized resource allocation toward efficient apron operations to achieve the desired objective of minimized waiting time for the arriving aircrafts.

Image source: Geoportail