Humanitarian organisations have a goal to help people in need by providing help in all kinds of ways.
Supplies and humanitarian workers have to be transported to every place where support is required. Even remote locations, where transport over conventional roads might be impossible, have to be accessible. Aviation is the solution for these areas. UNHAS (United Nations Humanitarian Air Service) provides passenger and cargo transport for the humanitarian community. A logistic problem arises when passengers have to be transported to multiple destinations with multiple aircraft. The goal of the research is to improve the routing and scheduling operations of humanitarian air services by means of a scheduling model. By implementing the Humanitarian Flight Optimization Model, the efficiency and effectiveness of the daily routing can be increased while giving an insight in what the impact of different routings can be on the total flight schedule.

Demand for air traffic is growing worldwide. In order to accommodate this growth, existing infrastructure such as gates should be used more efficiently. One technique to increase gate utilization is by introducing gate pit-stops. Introducing gate pit-stops leads to additional towing movements which can potentially interfere with other traffic on the apron. This in turn will lead to delays, which is undesirable. Currently, gate pit-stops are only performed for flights with a turnaround time of three hours or more. In order to investigate whether pit-stops can be effectively introduced on a broader scale, a model has been created that simulates gate assignments and apron movements. This model provides insight in the effect of gate pit-stops on gate utilization and apron congestion for different airport scenarios. Results show that introducing pit-stops for flights with a turnaround time of less than 180 minutes leads to an increase in flights that can be handled at a gate instead of a remote stand, at a small delay penalty. Airlines and airports can benefit from these findings as they will be able to handle more flights at a gate using existing infrastructure.

The Flight-to-Gate Assignment Problem (FGAP) covers the optimal assignment of flights, or rather the aircraft serving these flights, to the available aircraft stands. Existing FGAP models in literature do not consider airside and landside processes simultaneously. We propose a FGAP model with three specifications, where only airside constraints are active, both airside and landside constraint are active and passenger demand cannot exceed the fixed declared landside capacity, and both airside and landside constraint are active, and the landside passenger constraints are driven by the expected maximum passenger waiting time. The implementation of landside constraints results in a gate assignment at a increased cost, compared to gate assignment derived using inactive landside constraints. Imposing the constraint that passenger demand cannot exceed declared capacity creates a gate assignment at an increased cost com- pared to implementing a maximum passenger waiting time, but does o↵er a superior passenger experience since waiting times are non-existent.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of individually established buffer times, based on historical delay data, on the robustness of an operational stand and gate allocation schedule. Using flight schedules and the structural lay-out of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, a stand and gate allocation model is created using BEONTRA software. Eight allocation schedules are
specified with each a set of different buffer times, which are established after grouping and analysing the historical delay data. The flight schedule that is used as input is the one for peak day Monday 16 July 2018. The allocation schedules are then tested amongst others on probability of overlap and on delay data as a result of simulation. A by LvNL validated model of Schiphol is used in fast-time simulation programme AirTOp to simulate common delays on the allocation
schedules. The outcome is compared to the outcome of two baseline schedules, after which conclusions are drawn and recommendations are given with regard to the effectivity of buffer time optimisation.

The master thesis is about testing the effectiveness of the Airport demand management strategies. Based on the problem of increasing pressure on airport capacity, due to the increase of the demand on flying. The goal is to find a system which supports planning of air traffic control by generating knowledge about the throughput of arrivals. A Discrete Event Simulation approach is used to simulate the behaviour of arrivals in case of capacity issues. The model uses random generated slot allocated schedules to test the effectiveness of several strategies. Eventually the result of the strategies is presented in an optimum ratio between delays and cancellations of the tested strategies. The main conclusion of the research is that the model is capable of testing the effectiveness of airport demand management strategies. It also provides knowledge on expected bottlenecks of the arrival operations by generating the average delay per hour and queue propagation for each strategy.

The steady growth of air traffic volumes and the subsequent increase of congestion at major airports require airports to increase their operational efficiency. Inefficient or the absence of gate reassignment models increase the possibility and occurrence of gate blockage and at the same time reduce the comfort of passengers as they often receive the notice that they have to wait for their assigned gate to become available. This thesis describes a model to optimally reallocate flights to available gates on the actual day of operation for a large airport, such as Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS). It takes into account the scheduled arrival time of a flight for the initial assignment, during daily operation the model updates the scheduled arrival time with the estimated arrival time as soon as the flight is enroute. The proposed model allows the user to do a trade-off between delaying, gate changing and remote handling of flights. The sliding time window has shown to reduce the number of gate changes required during daily operation in order to mitigate gate conflicts. Validation of the model with data obtained from AAS showed that the approach is feasible for real world application and that it improves the operational efficiency of the airport.

Margins for cargo airlines that were already thin have been put further under pressure, which stresses the importance of operating a profitable schedule. Research on modelling passenger operations has proven that integrating different steps in the schedule planning process can yield a significant increase in profit. For cargo operations no integrated model exists that can provide an integrated schedule planning from scratch within reasonable computation time.
The model proposed in this work aims to integrate schedule design, fleet assignment, aircraft routing and cargo routing for both express freight- and general freight airlines. A dynamic programming optimisation framework is introduced that decomposes the schedule planning problem for a week of operations into sub-problems, that each aim to optimise the rotation of an individual aircraft. The model takes important operational constraints and airline requirements into account, such as maintenance and a minimum service frequency per flight leg, while optimising for minimum cost, maximum profit, or connectivity. Tests were conducted on three real-life case studies, that reflect the applicability of the methodology developed. The results show that the generated schedules meet imposed requirements and reflect real airline operations, according to industry experts. Furthermore, the model provides results in reasonable computation time, which for a small airline is under 10 minutes.

The most common operational measure in aviation to reduce the effect of environmental noise pollution is noise abatement procedures. Noise abatement procedures are recommended flying techniques based on noise optimal trajectories, which aim at reducing the noise impact on local communities as much as possible. Atmospheric conditions influence sound propagation, however the noise abatement procedures are often fixed and independent of weather conditions.

This research has been set up in order to analyse whether the implementation of weather-adaptive noise abatement procedures result in different noise optimal trajectories in different weather conditions. The research objective is to assess the influence of weather on optimised noise abatement departure procedures for one fly over, by developing an optimisation tool that allows for the synthesis of weather adaptive noise abatement procedures within the terminal manoeuvring area.

To analyse the influence of different atmospheric conditions on the noise optimal trajectories in various weather conditions, a sound propagation model has been developed with the inclusion of variable air temperature and lapse rate, relative humidity, wind profile and ground surface type. Together with an aircraft performance model enhanced with varied atmospheric conditions and a noise impact model, the noise optimal trajectories in different weather conditions are obtained using optimal control theory in GPOPS. The model can be adapted to various requirements and aircraft types.

The resulting trajectories are used to evaluate whether weather-adaptive noise abatement procedures should be implemented or not and to evaluate the performance of optimal control theory in this framework.

The thought of being secure has been on the minds of people throughout history. Security is the protection against intended incidents. Intended incidents happen due to a result of a deliberate and planned act. Security systems are implemented in order to set up security precautions which have as main goal the protection of all assets present within the environment under supervision. In recent years security in aviation, and especially in the airport environment, is getting more and more important. The rising variety and growing number of threats upon the airport environment lead to the need for universal and rapid deployment of individual security systems. This caused a segregated way of working of the entire airport security system. The hypothesis arises that this way of working is inefficient, and a performance increase can be achieved when the airport security system would be integrated. This research is aimed at analyzing a possible approach to integrate the airport security system and its influence on the performance indicators of the airport security system.

Some performance indicators of the airport security system, such as level of security and level of service, are in conflict with each other.

The agent-based modeling approach is used to properly represent the socio-technical nature of the airport security system. This way the individual agents can be modeled with their own set of rules, while addressing the relationships between agents in the airport environment as well. A specially designed security risk scenario, discussing the boundaries of the environment, the type of threats present and the type of threat sources and objects present, forms the basis of the input for the agent-based model.

This exploratory graduation thesis provides a first attempt in proposing an approach to integrate the current airport security system in order to increase performance in both the level of security and level of service. Three different configurations of an integrated airport security system are proposed by means of decision data fusion. Findings of this thesis showed the greatest potential improvement of the level of security and the level of service when implementing an integrated adaptive configuration of the airport security system.

Where a relatively small part (less than 1%) by volume of world trade is represented by air transport, the orientation towards high value products results in a share of almost 35% of international trade in value. But where data of the amount of trade between countries is highly available, the actual routing of those traded goods is not known at the moment. This means that up until today it is unknown for airlines, airports, forwarders and other important stakeholders how trade between countries have been flown. This research includes the development of a model to estimate yearly air cargo flows over the global air transport network by using country-to-country air trade data. The novelty in this model lies in the fact that this is the first model in academic literature that estimates air cargo flows in such a detailed airport-to-airport level. Both on the demand side of the model as on the supply side very granular data is used. O/D air trade data on country-to-country level is the main demand input, where route choices are based on scheduled flight services reported by the airline, serve as supply input. model framework

Startups are a major source of innovation and are capable of doing things where larger firms are not capable of. Many corporates are therefore looking at opportunities to collaborate with startups, also called external venturing, and to capture their value. Although working with startups has many benefits and great opportunities for corporates, it is currently not part of Fokker Services’ innovation strategy, and therefore the objective of this study was to determine the first steps for Fokker Services to start with external venturing. However, Fokker Services is mainly active in the commercial aviation industry, and this industry differs from non-aviation industries in many ways. Therefore it has been decided that it was required first to determine how external venturing should be done in the (Dutch) aviation industry specifically. The answer to this question, which has also been the answer to the main research question, has been found in the formof a normative framework. This framework describes success factors and pitfalls for external venturing in the Dutch aviation industry and exists out of five different levels. These levels are found during the literature study and describe prerequisites to do external venturing in the right way. The normative framework has been the foundation on which the first steps for Fokker Service, to start with external venturing, relied on and has been presented in the form of an implementation plan. This plan describes four short-term stage, a mid-long term stage and a long-term stage with accompanying steps at the five levels relevant for external venturing. The normative framework is, in its turn, has been build based on a two-fold approach. First by translating key learnings from other organisations and external venturing experts about the execution of external venturing (combined with a literature study) into a list of success factors and pitfalls. Secondly by translating solutions to overcome industry specific startup challenges into success factors and pitfalls. The research strategy to answer the first part of this two-fold approach is chosen to be a literature study combined with a qualitative, multiple case study strategy. The research strategy to answer the second part of the two-fold approach has also been chosen to be a qualitative, multiple case study strategy. Unstructured interviews served as main data collection method for the case studies, and as a result, one of the most important solutions to overcome startup challenges is to grow and improve the Dutch aviation startup ecosystem. Another important solution is to clearly define the opportunities for entrepreneurs in the Dutch aviation industry. Both solutions aim at increasing the likelihood of entrepreneurs to enter the Dutch aviation industry. To overcome the remainder of the startup challenges, four external venturing ingredients have been found which should at least be present in each external venturing program aimed at the aviation industry. These four elements are business services, financing instruments, network and people connectivity and opportunities to use the corporate image. All these solutions have been translated into success factors for external venturing in theDutch aviation industry by saying that having a full-grown startup ecosystem, clearly defined opportunities and an external venturing program with at least containing the aforementioned four ingredients increases the chances on successful collaborations. Together with the success factors and pitfalls for external venturing in general, we now know how Fokker Services and other organisations in the Dutch aviation industry can start with external venturing in an effective way.