A Study of Gate Use at Honolulu International Airport

Abstract

Records of actual aircraft arrival times, departure times, and gate occupancies at Honolulu International Airport are analyzed to determine what factors influence gate requirements. Aircraft movements were decomposed into scheduled and nonscheduled operations. The former were compared with the scheduled arrival and departure times as given in the International Airline Guide. An analysis of data for three Saturdays over the 24-hour day showed that actual gate requirements correspond closely to scheduled requirements. The average variance to mean ratio for number of gates occupied at corresponding times on the three days was about 0.14 (if arrivals and departures were completely random, this would have a value of 1). A similar analysis for number of gates occupied by nonscheduled aircraft agreed very well with a Poisson distribution.