Criteria prioritization for investment policies in General Aviation aerodromes

Abstract

Due to the significant proportion of General Aviation (GA) in aircraft fleets and the high number of aerodromes in various countries, establishing investment criteria for aeronautical infrastructure necessitates the formulation of public policies regarding aviation. The literature dealing with the prioritization of airfields in receiving investments commonly uses commercial aviation data, such as the movement of passengers and aircraft at airports. As this kind of measure is not usually recorded in GA, such as the movement of air taxis, agricultural aviation, and instructional flights, the main gap covered by this study is to use variables that are feasible for GA. Adopting Brazil as a case study due to its substantial quantity of aircraft and aerodromes, this study’s georeferenced analysis considered 574 public aerodromes, 4,899 cities, and 4,550 towns distributed throughout the country, totaling 9,449 locations. To prioritize GA aerodromes, multi‐criteria decision‐making was used to prioritize 380 aerodromes with exclusive GA operations. The results indicate that regional location is the main concern in the construction of new aerodromes for GA, to prioritize better spatial coverage within the national territory. Furthermore, the study proposes a simplified mathematical model for public managers to use when formulating public policies to prioritize already existing aerodromes to increase investments and estimate maximum values to invest in these aerodromes. Different variables can be incorporated into the model according to the particularities of each country when formulating public aviation policies.

Aeronautical Infrastructure Optimization to Enhance the Strategic and Operational Business Performance of Small Airports

“…These results complement those proposed by Caetano et al [14], who also identify little relevance to the physical dimensions of the runway compared to the number of cities and towns served by the airport, GDP/capita, formal jobs in the municipality, and population when prioritizing aerodromes for investments. On the other hand, variables such as passenger terminal size (TPS) and maximum take-off weight of the aircraft in operation (MTOW), as well as passenger movement, have a high level of relevance, which demonstrates characteristics of interest in small airports that are different from those commonly considered in the literature [31,32].…”

“…Efficiency analysis of small airport operations considers many infrastructural characteristics, such as runway length, passenger processing capacity [3], building size and age, and technical equipment [13]. Other studies highlight the network of factors influencing airport performance, including socio-economic aspects [14][15][16], planning, management, and operations [10]. Suau-Sanches and Voltes-Dorta [3], for instance, employ the zero-inflated Poisson model to identify small airports with favorable conditions for airlines to increase regular passenger traffic and stimulate socio-economic development.…”

Small airport business governance and regional development.

“…The significance level underscores the relevance of flights delayed by more than 60 minutes, the attraction index for airports, and GDP per capita in determining efficiency. These findings are consistent with those reported in Caetano et al (2022), which examine technical-operational and socioeconomic indicators associated with Brazilian public general aviation aerodromes and their impact on regional development. Additionally, they align with the results of Grubesic et al (2017), who investigated the development of the reliever airport network in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the United States.…”

Aviation Accident and Incident Forecasting Combining Occurrence Investigation and Meteorological Data Using Machine Learning

“…In this case, the highest percentage of aircraft (approximately 10%) involved in the occurrences have MTOW above 70 tons with the ICAO models A320 and B738 being the main aircraft. This demonstrates that the highest number of occurrences is among commercial aviation aircraft, even though such aircraft represent less than 5% of all aircraft registered in Brazil -640 of 16,213 aircraft (Caetano et al, 2022).…”