ACI World issues guidance on airside safety and operations during COVID-19. Airports advised to implement special measures to maintain safety standards

Airports looking to increase capacity are now presented with a bewildering range of potential enablers. Whilst each airport will need to carefully evaluate the potential benefits and order of these enablers two key issues need to be considered.

Ever growing complexity is the new normal for Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). Today’s controllers have to be aware of a magnitude of different flight procedures, and consider a steadily growing amount of data while operating multiple systems in the control rooms, all this while putting safety first, and respecting the growing demand for efficient and sustainable routing and guidance.

RMS Leads Operational Efficiency. Passenger numbers are growing and airport capacity is stretched. When resources are pushed to their limits, it’s critical that they are managed in the most efficient and effective manner to avoid delays that could lead to customer dissatisfaction and penalties for the airports.

Baggage Tracking Solution Provides Operational and Financial Benefits. For airlines and airports end-to-end bag tracking is critical, and as passenger traffic grows, the likelihood of misdirected bags grows as well. “The more passengers we have traveling, the more we need to manage the baggage process to make it more efficient

ARE RUNWAY STATUS LIGHTS THE SOLUTION TO REDUCING RUNWAY ACCIDENTS? Aviation is one of the most regulated industries, behind nuclear, to ensure operations are safe because of how unforgiving the results of mistakes can be. This has resulted in huge reductions in aviation accidents over time; however, more improvements can always be made. James Lewis, ATM Consultant of Think Research Ltd, investigated whether runway status lights could reduce the likelihood of high severity runway incursions.

The potential use cases of drones are virtually limitless. They can transform our daily lives. However, drones pose a serious security and privacy threat unless they can be identified and monitored by aviation authorities

With the arrival of both LCCs and leading Middle East airlines running lean business models, and with increasing competition from bare-bones airports running at out-of-city locations, today’s airports have to investigate and analyse every aspect of their operations to ensure efficiency. The upside is that with smart management and increased efficiency, a by-product in the form of increased sustainability comes free – in both business and environmental terms. An efficient airport is a sustainable airport.1

Munich Airport has been recognized for its effective climate change efforts by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an international organization that supports companies and cities with the disclosure of environmental data

Brussels Airport has just secured a successful renewal at the highest currently available level of carbon management within Airport Carbon Accreditation - Level 3+ Neutrality.

Can IATA’s Crowd Sourcing Tool Help Airlines Avoid Turbulence? Avionics International stated that the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) is a few months away from transitioning from the initial pilot phase for its Turbulence Aware platform — a cloud database collecting real time turbulence reports from participating airlines — to full operational deployment, available to airlines beginning in January.

For airlines and airports end-to-end bag tracking is critical, and as passenger traffic grows, the likelihood of misdirected bags grows as well. “The more passengers we have travelling, the more we need to manage the baggage process to make it more efficient. Baggage tracking is an essential part of this process,” says John Carr, product owner, ADB SAFEGATE Airport Systems.

Airports face increased pressure to maximise use of existing airport infrastructure to accommodate strong traffic growth. For a dedicated arrivals runway, Optimizing capacity is all about reducing the interarrival separation.

The Hamburg Airport focus remains firmly on the traveller in 2019. While last year was a challenging one for the airport, with a slight decrease in passenger numbers, it still served over 17 million and reports a consistently high level of satisfaction.

For U.S. Carriers, domestic passengers alone, the 2019 FAA forecast calls for growth over the next 20 years to average 1.8% each year. While airports do their best to meet growing demand, the challenge of ensuring appropriately sized facilities to meet the growth remains.

Baggage tractors zooming about an airport apron can be an obvious hazard – but how much more dangerous can they be when they move into a baggage gallery, crowded with people, to pick up or drop off loads?

In 2017, Frost & Sullivan kicked off its “Digital Transformation in Aviation” research initiative, running a series of global airline and airport surveys, aiming to understand the current state and future digital vision of operators.

The industry saw massive changes around the turn of the century in the airspace domain (Area and Terminal operations) of Air Traffic Management (ATM), when much of the new technology was rolled out to support Air Traffic Control (ATC) operations. There were significant gains for the ATM industry then but the pace of airport airside change has been much slower.

Across the globe, passengers are demanding higher levels of service. Likewise, regulators are paying closer attention to airport service provision and quality of service delivery. Competition among airports has reached new heights as structural and ownership changes bring new stakeholders and business models into the industry.