Friday, July 27, 2012

Airport Planning Blog in different languages using Google Translate widget

I have just installed a Google translate widget on the left that will translate my blog into different languages.  I know that the translation will not be perfect but I thought it's cool.


Information for other language users
English
Airport planning blog.  To translate this blog into your language, Please use the Google translate button on the left.

Arabic
مطار التخطيط بلوق. لترجمة هذا بلوق إلى لغتك، الرجاء استخدام زر جوجل ترجمة على اليسار.


Chinese
机场规划博客这个博客翻译成你的语言,请使用谷歌翻译按钮左侧

French
Blog planification Aéroport. Pour traduire ce blog dans votre langue, S'il vous plaît utiliser le bouton Google translate sur la gauche.


Russian
Блог аэропорта планирования. Чтобы перевести этот блог на ваш язык, пожалуйста, используйте Google Translate кнопку слева.

Spanish
Aeropuerto blog de la planificación. Para traducir este blog en su idioma, por favor utilizar el botón de Google Translate en el lado izquierdo.








Thursday, July 26, 2012

A Selection of Books for an Airport Planning Library

I had done a post on the first Airport Planning Books I encountered.  I thought I would do a post about current Airport Planning Books and Airport Management Books that you might want to consider reading.  I have divided the selection into books suitable for US and Non-US audiences.

Books suitable for US and Non-US readers (covers both ICAO and FAA standards, US and non-US airports)

1.  Airport Engineering (Ashford) - Very readable with coverage of both ICAO and FAA standards.  The last edition was in 1992 so I am pleased that it has finally been updated.  This edition was published in 2011.
Publication Date End-2012
2.  Airport Operations (Ashford) - I enjoyed reading the 2nd edition published in 1999.  It has not been updated since then.  This 3rd edition is anticipated to be published at the end of 2012.  I am looking forward to reading the new edition.
Publication Date 2013, current 1st edition (2003)
3.  Airport Systems (de Neuville) -  FAA and American Airport references are the majority in this book but there is still a sizable amount of ICAO and non-US references.  This book is written from an operations research perspective.  It is not easy to read for a novice.

 Books primarily for non-US audience (ICAO and non-US standards)

4.  The Air Transport System (Hirst) - This is not an airport planning book but provides an airport planner with base knowledge of the air transport system. Written by a British author.

5.  Managing Airports (Graham) - This book is not about airport planning but might be useful for airport planners to understand how airports are managed.  Written by a British author.

6.  The independent airport planning manual (Bradley) - I have not read this book but the blurb for the books says that the author was the editor for the IATA Airport Development Reference Manual.

Books primarily for US audience (FAA and US airport-centric)

7.  Airport Planning & Management (Young, Wells) - This is a very readable book and an easy read, good for beginners.  It is updated regularly.  However, it is written for a US audience so a reader outside the US might not find all the information in the book applicable for their context.

8.  Planning & Design of Airports (Horonjeff) -  This is a classic for Airport Engineers.  I have not read it recently but based on my memory, it was heavy on the civil engineering side. 

9.  Airport Planning A Practical Guide for Planners and Airport Managers (Bezilla) - This book was written by the former Director of Planning and Environmental Services of Baltimore Airport.





Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Denver Airport Master Plan (DEN)





DEN Airport City Land Use Plan

DEN Airport City

Pictures taken from Denver Airport's Master Plan Brochure and Airport City Website.

Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport Master Plan (BKK)

Initial Phase

Ultimate Phase

Proposed Expansion
I was searching for a Master Plan for Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport and this was the closest I could find.  It shows the 2 phases of development and the proposed expansion.

Pictures from Suvarnabhumi Airport website.

Jakarta Soekarno Hatta International Airport (JKT) Master Plan




JKT caught my attention recently because of the spectacular growth it has been experiencing recently.  It is the busiest airport in Southeast Asia overtaking both Bangkok and Singapore.  In 2011, it had 54million passengers, which was 19.3% more than 2010. 

It is bursting at its seams and so expansion of the airport is needed urgently.  There is a US$1.3billion expansion plan expected to begin this month (July 2012).  Click here to read the Jakarta Globe's story about this.

The Master Plan shows the existing 2 parallel Runways and 3 Terminals.  It also shows a proposed 3rd Runway and 4th Terminal.

Click here for a video (9min 17 sec) showing Soekarno Hatta International Airport's Master Plan.  It's called the "Grand Design".  It's not in English but the illustrations are quite informative with English terms scattered throughout the video.

Pictures are taken from the video.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

About Airport Planning Blog - 2nd most popular post

Being a novice blogger, it is interesting to see the stats and see what people are reading on my blog.  The second most popular post on my blog is "Airport Planning Courses".  It is a short write up about what airport planning courses are out there in the world.  This was not too surprising to me.

What surprised me is the most popular post on my blog is " Munich-Riem Airport Redevelopment".  I was writing about old airports being redeveloped and I have a simple aerial picture of the old Munich-Riem airport with a short post.  The word 'munich riem' and the picture seem to direct traffic to my blog.   The strange world of the internet and search engines.....

Friday, July 13, 2012

Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) Master Plan


This is obtained from the Houston Airport System's (HAS) website. 

Top 30 airports in the world - An Analysis by CAPA

I was looking for a list of the top 30 airports in terms of passenger numbers and came across this article by the Centre of Aviation (CAPA) about "The world's top 30 airports: a disparate grouping".  (click here for the article)  The list above is from the article.

The following a listing of the various aspects that it examines in the analysis of the world's top 30 airports in 2010.
- how the list of the top 30 airports have changed over the last 20 years and a breakdown by region
- It looked at various subgroups, primarily international and primarily domestic, I was not surprised to read that DXB, HKG and AMS was 100% international passengers but it was interesting to note that London Heathrow (LHR) was 94% international passengers.
- It examined hub dominance and provides percentages of hub carrier at their hub airports.  These numbers are not easily available for airports which are located outside the United States.

Hub Carrier's share of total airport traffic
Singapore Airlines / Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) 34% (48% with Silkair and Tiger)
Emirates / Dubai Airport (DXB) 59%
Lufthansa / Frankfurt (FRA) and Munich (MUC) 63%
British Airways / London Heathrow (LHR) - less than half

- It also talks about Low Cost Carrier Traffic and provides numbers for legacy passenger traffic for various airports.
- There was also an analysis of carrier and alliance dominance at the top 30 airports.

If you want the actual numbers, I would suggest going to wikipedia and look at the article "World's busiest airports" click here.  The source for that is probably Airports Council International (ACI).

Saturday, July 7, 2012

London Heathrow Airport New Terminal 2






Pictures of the New Terminal 2 and 2B, the midfield pier that will be connected to Terminal 2. 
Source: Balfour Beatty (Builders of 2B) website.

Terminal 2 data
- Capacity: 20 million annual passengers
- 180,000m2
- opening in 2013
- Capacity will be increased when T2 is extended and a second satellite is built (T2C)

Source: BAA Heathrow website

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Master Plan



The pictures show the existing KLIA layout, the proposed 2056 layout (long-term Master Plan) and the third picture shows an updated KLIA Layout plan with the KLIA2 Terminal currently being built.

Source: Emerging Airports Conference website

Dubai Airport Master Plan




The pictures of the Dubai Airport Master Plan and related information are extracted from the Dubai Airports Strategic Plan 2020 which is available at their website. 

Concourse 3 opens early Jan 2013 and will bring the annual passenger handling capacity of DXB to 75 million.

New Beijing Airport Master Plan




Beijing Daxing Airport (no official name yet)
- Located in Daxing, 46km (28miles) south of Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
- 2,680ha (6,620acres)
- Completion end-2017

Ultimate Capacity
- 8 Runways
- 130 million annual passengers
- 5.5 million tonnes annual cargo

Source: Reuters "New Beijing Airport touted as world's busiest"
Pictures: Naco (Master Planners) website 

Friday, July 6, 2012

1 Bag 6 Cameras - An inside look at Airport Baggage Handling





Click here for a video (2min 43s) about a bag's journey from Atlanta Airport to New York Airport. 

From Delta Airlines' Blog,

"Have you ever wondered where your bags go after they pass through those black rubber flaps at the airport? Well, we rigged a bag with 6 cameras and sent it on its way from Atlanta to New York, just so you could find out! This is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at some of the people, places and things your bag encounters on its way to get from Point A to Point B."

Pictures from Delta's video.

Airport Apron Management and Control (ACRP Report 62)


The ACRP report 62 "Airport Apron Management and Control Programs" (click here) is primarily focused on safety on the aircraft parking apron. It also talks about regulations and who is responsible for those regulations and safety on the apron or ramp.


I found it useful because it contains information about how airport aprons/ramps are managed and contains case studies of different airports.   This report also has extensive coverage about apron management and control practices outside the United States.

The following is a partial extract from Section 9 of the report:

"U.S. airports do not typically provide the same level of active management and control of the apron environment as is provided at non-U.S. airports. Instead, U.S. airports rely primarily on the tenant airlines and ground service providers to safely and effectively manage the leased apron environment and to comply with operating procedures in the common-use (typically unleased) non-movement areas.

As expected, at the airports outside the United States, apron management and control is typically much more centralized through a specific apron control unit or department. These non-U.S. airports are typically responsible for more functions than airports in the United States, including gate allocation and assignment, ground handling, and integration with air traffic control. This is in part due to the lower prevalence of exclusive-use facility leases at non-U.S. airports. With facilities (i.e., gates) operated on a preferential or common-use basis, non-U.S. airports tend to play a more active role in the management and control of the apron areas.

 In the United States, the respective airports and tenant airlines share responsibility for these functions. In the cases where an airline uses a contractor for specific servicing func-tions like ground handling, catering, or fueling, the operational coordination is directly between the airline and the contractor, without involvement by the airport.  Airports typically do regulate the standards by which the contractor must operate in the apron area, but these are typically the same requirements and standards placed on an airline.

Outside the United States, apron management and control programs have evolved away from the need to allocate resources, specifically aircraft parking positions/gates (as well as ticketing and baggage claim areas), which are structured as common-use positions where the airport assigns aircraft to specific gates on a dynamic basis based on demand and specific aircraft type/size. This differs from the exclusive/ preferential-use model that is prevalent in the United States whereby the airlines lease specific gates and the apron areas associated with those gates and are responsible for managing the operations within that leased space.

In the United States, the gate assignments for the most part are made by the leasing airlines, which, as noted, have access to a specific set of gates that are leased under exclusive-/preferential-use terms. In some cases, there are U.S. airports that control common-use gates or remote aircraft parking positions. In these cases, the operations department for the airports is generally responsible for allocating those resources, but it was not observed to be on a scale comparable to Toronto, Beijing, or Zurich. The common-use gates observed in the United States were not used on a regular basis but more typically on a contingency basis as in the event of a charter flight or unplanned maintenance issue requiring a parking position outside of an airline's exclusively or preferentially leased gates.

These differing lease structures represent the single biggest difference in how the responsibilities of apron management are approached within and outside the United States. Although the apron control units outside the United States are primarily responsible for gate allocation, they offer a  single department from which all aspects of apron control can be managed. In the United States the operational and safety functions performed by those airports' apron control units are the same functions performed by a combination of parties: airport, airlines, and ground handling companies."

Sections 9.1 and 9.2 further elaborate on Non-US and US Airport Apron Management and Control.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...