New empirical evidence on airport capacity utilisation: Relationships between hourly and annual air traffic volumes

An important question in forecasting air traffic at airports is: How does the future traffic volume compare with capacity? We concentrate in this paper on air transport movements (ATMs) and runway capacity, since in many instances runways form the most critical airport component for expansion, due to environmental constraints. Air traffic forecasts like those of aircraft manufacturers typically yield annual volumes, whereas capacities are correctly measured in short time periods, i.e. hours. In answering the question of the conformity of demand (in this case ATMs) with capacity, future annual volumes have to be converted into peak hour volumes and then compared with capacity. The paper discusses the problem of selecting a suitable peak hour and informs on the annual capacity utilisation of airports worldwide in the form of "traffic ranking curves". Functional relationships between peak hour and annual ATM volumes have been derived for each type of airport capacity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.