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ESD
Dissertation Defense – Philippe
Bonnefoy
Scalability
of the Air Transportation System and
Development of Multi-Airport Systems:
A Worldwide Perspective
Abstract:
With the growing demand for air transportation
and the limited ability to increase
capacity at some key points in the
air transportation system, there are
concerns that in the future the system
will not scale to meet demand. This
situation will result in the generation
and the propagation of delays throughout
the system, impacting passengers’
quality of travel and more broadly
the economy. This thesis investigates
the mechanisms by which the air transportation
system has scaled to meet demand in
the past and is expected to do so
in the future using a multi-level
engineering systems approach.
The
air transportation system was first
analyzed at the U.S. national level
using network abstractions. In order
to investigate limits in scaling of
the U.S. air transportation network,
theories of scale-free and scalable
networks were used. It was found that
the U.S. air transportation network
was not scale-free due to capacity
constraints at major airports, also
preventing it to be scalable. However,
the construction and analysis of a
new network for which sets of two
or more significant airports that
serve passenger traffic in a metropolitan
region (i.e. multi-airport systems)
were aggregated into single nodes
showed that it was scale-free and
scalable. These results were also
supported by a time series analysis
of airport and multi-airport system
growth. These analyses demonstrated
the importance of regional level scaling
mechanisms (i.e. development of multi-airport
systems) in the ability of the air
transportation system to adapt and
scale to meet demand.
Given
the importance of multi-airport systems,
an in-depth multiple-case study analysis
of 55 multi-airport systems worldwide
was performed. This analysis was used
to develop a feedback model that captures
the fundamental processes that govern
the evolution of multi-airport systems.
Multi-airport
systems were found to evolve according
to two fundamental mechanisms: (1)
the construction of new airports and
(2) the emergence of secondary airports
through the use of existing non-utilized
airports. Several differences and
similarities in the occurrence of
these dynamics were identified across
world regions. It was found that in
the United States and Europe, the
construction of new large airports
occurred prior to or during World
War II and to a minor extent during
the 1960s and 1970s. More recently,
significant limitations to the development
of new airports (e.g. opposition from
local communities) and changes in
the airline industry (e.g. emergence
and growth of low-cost carriers) led
multi-airport systems in the United
States and Europe to evolve through
the emergence of secondary airports.
In the Asia-Pacific region, multi-airport
systems have predominantly evolved
through the construction of new airports,
due to fewer available airports, high
projections of demand and weaker opposition
to the construction of airports.
The
analyses and insights from this thesis
were also used to analyze and better
understand the evolution of future
multi-airport systems and provide
recommendations for infrastructure
management policies and multi-airport
system development strategies.
Supervisor:
R. John Hansman
Committee members: Cynthia
Barnhart, Richard de Neufville, Amedeo
Odoni
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