School of Mechanical Engineering

Fall Semester 2020-21

THE AIRPORT PASSENGER TRAFFIC MODEL

Final Review Report

Submitted by
Parameswaran 18BME0006
Kumar Apurb 18BME0731
Anshul Mittal 18BME0738
A O Shankar Narayanan 18BME0869
Parth Goel 18BME2010

Prepared For
MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS
MEE2013 - J COMPONENT

Submitted To
Dr. Ashish Kumar
Assistant Professor Sr.

May, 2021
 2

INDEX
Page
S. No. Content
No.
1. Introduction 3

Objective
➢ Need for the Model
➢ Scope of Solution
2. 3
➢ Scope Exclusions
➢ Major Deliverables
➢ Project Constrains

3. Details about the Industry 4

Input data collection and analysis

➢ Data collection methodology
- Sources of Data collection
➢ Data points in our model
➢ Sample Data
4. 5
- Assumptions made for preliminary simulation
➢ Data Correlation
- Seats and Passengers
- Scatter Plot
- Box and Whisker Chart

5. Flow chart 10

Arena Model and Sub-models

➢ Passenger Arrival
6. ➢ Flight Arrival 10
➢ Flight Departure
➢ Final Model Views

7. Test Cases and IF Scenarios 15

8. Verification and Validation 18

9. Conclusion 19

10. Acknowledgements 20
 3

INTRODUCTION
Modern day advancements in technology have enabled safer, faster and cheaper flights making it the
go-to mode of transportation for most passengers. Hence it is crucial to increase the efficiency of
airports through modeling and analyzing airport operations.
The aim of this project is to develop an “Airport Passenger Traffic Model” that will be used to analyze
the passenger traffic flow and boarding times and further experiment with the process or the system
in a virtual setting.
The model can be used to track all time entries, test multiple other iterations or predict the future state
of the system thereby ensuring higher operational efficiency of the airport facilities. Therefore, a
computational model was developed in Arena Software to perform a discrete event simulation of the
air transport terminal. In this project we particularly discuss the passenger flow in the departure hall
around the check-in facilities.

OBJECTIVES
- To build an Airport Passenger Traffic Model to simulate & understand passenger behavior in from
entrance at the gate to exit from airport departure terminal and thereby analyze the passenger traffic
flow.
- The model will allow an airport to determine the best use of resources with the lowest possible cost
which can, in turn, have a considerable contribution to a developing city/nation's economic
development.
- Use of Advanced Simulation tool such as ARENA to improve performance of the model, conduct
deeper analysis and attain dynamic visualizations to better understand the system interactions
- Use the model to predict the whole system behavior or possibilities in any given scenario, iterative
experimentation, and what if scenarios without risks or excess time involved with testing in the real
world.

NEED FOR THE MODEL:

- Due to Air transportation in today's world the time of travel from one location to another has
significantly reduced but what about the total time spent by pedestrians inside the airport? Airport
delays account for more than 60% of travel delays. This is comparable with the air travel time.
- Simultaneous Operation of Multiple airport facilities with improper administration and efficient
system may hamper the flight schedule and other activities that can lead to a management deficiency
and stochastic passenger dynamics.
- Boarding time has become a major concern for both airlines and airports in recent times due to the
increase in air travel and airport congestion due to below-par infrastructure.
- Therefore, the importance of aspects like security, Luggage services' efficiency, bottleneck
avoidance, quality of services, sustainability, and rationalization of costs are very significant to an
airport's functioning.
 4

SCOPE OF SOLUTION:
- Number of passengers arriving and departing the airport for a given day or time frame.
- Flight delay considerations in the flight itinerary
- Boarding pass verification and personnel checking on passenger arrival

SCOPE EXCLUSIONS:
- Flow capacity is restricted to a manageable quantity depending on the airport infrastructure,
i.e., complicated pedestrian movement in built environments is not taken into account for this
model.
- Emergency situations such natural/manmade hazards are discarded from our test cases due to
the variability of its effect on the number of passengers and the shutdown of traditional
system.
- Passenger boarding is terminal-based meaning there is no segregation between domestic
and international flights. However, for the purpose of simplicity the model primarily uses
domestic flights.

MAJOR DELIVERABLES:
- Determination of all objects, attributes, and their interactions
- Workflow in the format of flowchart methodology
- Discrete Event Simulation Model and preliminary results such as Check-In Times, waiting for
hall capacity, and other control points
- Project Report Covering all the work within the scope

PROJECT CONSTRAINS:
- Consistent data availability of various parameters is not feasible since most data sources
record only one particular type of data. The resources to avail for the entire lot of data from an
airport is not possible.
- Excess time requirements to build enhance models with Visualizations and Analysis due to
lack of proficiency in Arena Software.

DETAILS ABOUT THE INDUSTRY:

The airport system complex must be viewed in terms of the total transportation system. Its primary
purpose is to transfer a passenger from the ground transportation system to the air transportation
system (and vice-versa) or to transfer a passenger from one portion of the air transportation system
to another. It is basically an interface between ground travel and air travel.

The number of passengers in the airport industry is increasing day by day. The number of
passengers in airport went nearly thrice in 8 years. The number of airports is also increasing day
by day. Managing flights incoming, outgoing as well as maintaining the passengers is a real time
problem. Also managing an airport with multiple incoming and outgoing terminals as well as
managing flights with a given number of runways would require a great amount of simulation
 5

INPUT DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS:

There are numerous methods of collecting the data however we chose to stick to online sources
primarily for the preliminary simulation and enquiries with a trustable source for the final model.
The research journals from Mendeley and Elsevier are excellent sources to get a raw idea of some
of the basic time consumptions in the airport. The Government reports and NGO (Non-Government
reports) are especially useful in the early stage to derive the flight itineraries and overall passenger
analytics. The various data collection methodology is depicted below:

Data Collection Methodology

Research journals Governmental NGO reports Enquiries

report

Mendeley & kaggle.com (CC0: For Secondary data - We

Elsevier data.gov/ Public Domain) intend to contact known
operating staff and use
triangular distribution.

Research Gate openflights.org

Local Aviation
Dept. Reports

We then searched for many airports starting from well-known airport in India such as Chennai
International Airport and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport but the data taken
from them was non consistent on analysis and they do not entertain enquiries for certain data on
call unless the availing party is authorized by Government. In addition to it these airports did not
have sufficient open-source data due the lack of data analysts and hobbyists studying these
airports. Therefore, we chose an Overseas airport: Miami International Airport for data in our
model.

After choosing the airport we also made sure we get certain constant numbers such
as passenger delay at check-in counter and flight delays due to certain case from
the staff at the airport on call. It was not possible during the preliminary testing
however we managed to obtain the values for the final model.
 6

SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION:

-The statistical data would be collected from various websites for the airport.
(Association of private airport operators).
-The data for arrival and departure of various flights would be collected from daily
schedule
of the airport.
-Similarly, the number of passengers incoming and outgoing would be collected from
various online sources like the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
-The data which are not available would be mathematically approximated according
to the graphs and statistics found on various aviation websites.

DATA POINTS IN THE MODEL:

The various data points in our model are depicted in the chart below.
 7

SAMPLE DATA:

ASSUMPTIONS MADE FOR PRELIMINARY SIMULATION:

-A well-known airport is chosen- To obtain uniformity in the data Miami

International Airport is considered when collecting data. It'd also a very busy airport
ensuring data without lapses.

-Primary Variables- The model has 5 gates, 2 runways, and 3 check-in desks.

-Limiting Time Frame- The time frame is restricted to only one day and the data is
analyzed for one day over a course of one or two weeks.

-Secondary Variables-
• Delay at Identification check = 2 min
• Delay at check-in = 2 min
• Passenger Security = 15 min
• Boarding Delay = 10 min
• Plane Security = 20 min
 8

NOTE: Some of the minor data which require enquiry with official authority is kept constant for the
preliminary testing. However, a mean is assumed from referencing journals across various
simulations for proper results.

DATA CORRELATION:

SEATS AND PASSENGERS:

The following graph shoes the seats booked on a certain day in MIA (Miami International
Airport) in Blue and the number of passengers who showed up on that particular day. It is noted
that there are plenty of days when the seats are left empty. This can be improved with the airport
simulation model.

SCATTER PLOT:
The scatter plot below shows the positive uniform correlation between flights (on x-axis) and
passengers (on y-axis) which we expect from any data for it to be consistent. More flights should
I general carry more passengers as one expects but in most of the data obtained from Indian
Airports the plot was highly scattered and lacked consistency. In Miami International Airport the
plot was the optimal among all of them. Even I this plot, some points have lots of excess flight
which can be attributed to a natural/manmade calamity in airport such as a terrorist attack,
Hijacking, earthquakes, etc.
 9

BOX AND WHISKER CHART:

This chart shoes the range of passenger in check-in on a given day.

 10

FLOW CHART

ARENA MODEL AND SUB-MODELS

Description: Model is a small-scale replica of original Miami Airport. Since the student version
of the software doesn’t allow to run large scale models therefore number of passengers and
flights per month are reduced and arrival time is adjusted accordingly. New data for the model is:
 11

Flight size is also reduced to 15 passenger per flight which is almost by the factor of 10.
To simplify the model, we can divide it into 3 different parts:
1. Passenger Arrival
2. Flight Arrival
3. Flight Departure

PASSENGER ARRIVAL
- Passengers are arriving at the rate of 1 passenger / minute.
- Going through Identification check ang check in counter which causes 2 minutes delay each.
- After this passenger goes to security check which takes 5 minutes for every passenger.

- Gates are being allocated to each passenger in the check in sub models as
shown below

- Passengers starts waiting on their respective gates until their plane arrives.
 12

FLIGHT ARRIVAL

- Flight arrives at the rate of 1 flight every 14 minutes.

- Flight goes through Gate allocation which takes 2 minutes.
- If the gate allocated is already occupied it returns and go through the process
again.
- After getting the gate successfully plane goes through security check which
takes around 10 minutes for each plane.
- When security is cleared plane goes to respective gates.

FLIGHT DEPARTURE
- First plane arrives at their respective gates after a successful security check.
- Signal is sent to passenger’s gate to start releasing passengers.
- As soon as the passengers are boarded plane is released to take off.
- Runway is assigned to the plane based on the availability of runway.
- It takes wait time of 1 min to take off and the Plane is departed with group of
15 Passengers per plane.
- The sub-model is shown below:
 13

FINAL MODEL VIEWS

Final Model 1
 14

Final Model 2

Red Circles in the Final Model 2 denotes Planes and Stick figures denotes Passengers,
Passengers waiting at their respective gates for plane to arrive. Passengers boarding
the plane when it has arrived on the gate
 15

TEST CASES AND IF SCENARIOS

5 different test cases are considered to determine how structure of airport can affect
Passenger wait time and crowd at the airport which will help in optimizing the
customer experience at the airport.

As shown in above table we have changed different components of Airport and

observed its effects on customers.
Case 2
- Reduced number of runways to 1
 16

- Outcome - There is no significant increase in wait time of passengers.

- Reason – In original Model Runway 2 was used in emergencies therefore it
was only used for around 76 times in whole month.
Case 3
- Increasing the number of gates to 7 from 5. This will need major change in
infrastructure of the Terminal.
 17

- Outcome –
o Waiting time at the gate is reduced.
o Waiting time for each plane is reduced before the allocation of gate.
- Effect –
o Ability of handling more airplane at a time is increased.
Case 4
- Reducing the number of gates to 3 from 5. This will need major change in
infrastructure of the Terminal.

- Outcome –
o Waiting line at the gate is becoming longer
o Waiting time for each plane is increased before the allocation of gate.
- Effect –
o Ability of handling more airplane at a time is reduced.
o Waiting time for planes at terminal is reduced.

Case 5
- Reduced Security time to 3 minutes. Which means Increasing Security Staff to
speed up the process.
- Outcome –
o Length of the queue is reduced at security check.
o Waiting time at Gates per passenger is increased.
o Waiting time of Flight at the terminal is reduced.
 18

- Effect –
o Passenger queue at security check is reduced therefore comfort is
increased
o Waiting time for flight is reduced so a greater number of flights can be
accommodated.
o No major infrastructure change is requiring to accommodate this change.

VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION

The verification of the model was done by comparing the expected results from the
test cases (IF scenarios) with the actual outcomes of the model after simulation. The
model was iterated for all the following conditions shown in the table. The model is
thus far validated from it and curated from appropriate stream of results.
 19

The actual outcome

matches the expected
outcome

Outcomes from Different Cases

CONCLUSION
A review of the existing simulation models with the model discussed here indicates that models
most closely meet the stated requirements. They can produce the required distributions of delay,
queue lengths, and occupancies for the boundaries specified. The major adaptation that would
appear necessary to complete the landside analysis capability would be including a model of the
curbside as a server of finite capacity rather than representing the time spent at curbside as a dwell
time. Run time and cost information suitable for comparisons of program efficiency were not
available. extensive data collection effort should be undertaken to provide a data base for further
model comparisons and validation.
 20

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

- I would like to express my gratitude towards Dr. Ashish Kumar for guiding me throughout
the project. I also feel thankful and express my kind gratitude towards our teacher for
allowing me to conduct THE AIRPORT PASSENGER TRAFFIC MODEL. I thank all
participants for their positive support and guidance.
- I would also like to thank the Miami International Airport Staff who have helped us
provide some reliable source of data in certain aspects of our model. They also
suggested that we read a paper for an example:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.02704.pdf
- I feel thankful to the college staff for giving me such a big opportunity.