The Impact of Mitigation Measures for System Capacity Constraints on the Future Air Transportation System

For the monetary, ecological and societal assessment of new technologies and procedures, the description of scenarios of the future is important. Especially for airports, the expected air tra�c demand is a crucial input for the justifcation of capacity enhancements and for the assessment of its future impact on the environment. In this paper, a forecast model is presented with special focus on the airport system and capacity constraints. The starting point is a forecast of global air tra�c based on growth rates published by leading companies in the air transport sector up to the year 2030. Since the required capacity enhancements to enable such a growth in air tra�c are often not considered, this forecast is denominated as "unconstrained". The "unconstrained forecast", which comprises more than 3600 airports,is compared to todays infrastructural capacities. In case that demand exceeds capacity there are several measures that can be taken to overcome this situation, e.g. by enhancing infrastructure capacity or by other mitigation measures (e.g. increasing aircraft seating capacity). A variety of these measures is introduced as well as the corresponding models, which are integrated in a simulation model that enables the derivation of a "constrained forecast". The capability of the resulting model chain is shown by di�erent use cases. The first use case shows the model's capability to investigate a broad range of di�erent scenarios for the description of possible developments of the future air transportation system. Based on different scenarios the model chain o�ers the potential to derive aircraft requirements (second use case). These requirements are based on a prede�ned capacity scenario and describe the aircraft designs in terms of capacity and range that would be most promising to overcome the expected capacity shortfalls in the air transportation system.