DEMAND FOR AIRCRAFT GATES

Demand for aircraft gates, which is defined as the number of aircraft expected to require the service provided at a terminal building at any given time during one day's operation, depends on flights scheduled and their actual behavior relative to those schedules. The schedules provide a deterministic element to the process of generating the actual number of aircraft at gates, and deviation from these schedules provides a stochastic element in the process. A model that incorporates these two elements has been developed to estimate gate requirements at airports. The results of applying the model to an actual operation of aircraft gates have demonstrated the ability of the model to describe gate occupancy as a function of time of day with reasonable accuracy. The results have also shown that a common gate use strategy (i.e., first-come, first-served discipline) requires fewer gates than strategies under which the use of gates is restricted to flights of a particular air carrier or sector. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated, given a scheduling practice involving bank operations, how the time internal between banks influences the requirement for gates.