Turnaround Integration in Trajectory and Network: Development of an Aircraft Turnaround Decision-Support Tool

The aircraft turnaround is the major driver of aircraft departure delays. To mitigate such delays reliable information sharing between stakeholders involved in the aircraft turnaround process is necessary. Building on Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) concept the TITAN project (Turnaround Integration in Trajectory and Network, a project co-founded by the 7 th Framework Programme of the European Commission) defines an advanced operational concept to identify improvement opportunities in the information flow between the various aircraft turnaround stakeholders as well as the potential influence of external processes (passenger/baggage flows). After its validation the TITAN operational concept is realised in the airline operational environment by developing a conceptual decision-support tool as a tangible concept view. The TITAN operational concept and tool define a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) allowing data to be pushed to aircraft turnaround stakeholders based on their data requirements, and the milestones which they are expected to reach as their contribution to the aircraft turnaround. In this paper, we present a SOA which enhances sharing of a more predictive common awareness of all relevant influences on the aircraft turnaround as means of facilitating more predictable and intelligent decision-making including evaluation and negotiation of possible schedule changes to mitigate aircraft turnaround delays. The procedure to develop a robust and reliable tool capable of enhancing the turnaround process efficiency and providing simultaneous feedback for further work in this scientific field is outlined in this paper.