A380 angst
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Posted Date: 01/03/2008
Issue: Airside International March 2008
Publication: Airside International
Integrating new aircraft generations into the world’s existing airport system is not going to be easy. The arrival of the A380 has shown this to be true. The A380 sets new standards in terms of size. Many airlines will welcome it because the A380 will enable them to achieve more favourable operating costs per passenger and thus strengthen their market position. But how will airports cope with the new super-jumbo? In a large number of cases, accommodating this giant and integrating it into aviation operations will require substantial modifications of the ground infrastructure. For some airports, this will involve major expenditure; others may not be able to make the needed adjustments.
Operational drivers
The arrival of new aircraft types to meet growing demand for air travel is inevitable. With 60 million aircraft movements worldwide in 2001, airlines carried 3.2 billion passengers and 61.6 million tons of cargo. By 2021, to meet growing demand and upgrade their fleets, airlines will have to buy more than 20,000 new aircraft, representing a market worth more than $2 trillion. Boeing is planning to meet market requirements by modernising its B747 which, with 400 seats, has for many years been the biggest civil aviation aircraft in the world. Additionally, the US airframer will soon start production of the 787, a 250-seater for thinner intercontinental routes.
In Europe, Airbus has already delivered the A380 to Singapore Airlines. This aircraft is setting new standards in respect of size and passenger comfort. The long haul version of this aircraft will be able to seat 550 passengers; the short haul version 800. Follow-up versions with a stretched fuselage, capable to taking up to a 1,000 passengers, are already in the pipeline. The A380’s operating costs per seat are reportedly 15-20% lower than those of the 747 with a much better noise and emissions profile. So far around 165 A380s have been sold. Within the next 20 years, more than 800 are expected to be in operation. With a wingspan of almost 80m – 14m more than today’s largest passenger aircraft, the 747-400 – a tail assembly height of 24m and a length of 73m (or 79m, depending on the version), the A380 is the world’s new number one aircraft in terms of size. Its upper deck stretches all the way to the tail, instead of being just a hunchback, as with the 747.
But will airports generally be able to handle this new large aircraft? As a general rule, airport infrastructure is geared to coping, at the most, with the 747-400. So the question that arises for airline executives is whether their home and destination airports offer sufficient space for these new giants. And how many A380s will an airport be able to accommodate in respect of takeoffs and landings, servicing and parking? To assess airport/A380 compatibility, a number of different factors require separate appraisal. These include the aircraft movement areas (runways, taxiways and aprons), the aircraft servicing system, and the terminal system. This calls for thorough analysis on the basis of the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and national guidelines.
Aircraft movement areas
The minimum demands on the external dimensions of the aircraft movement areas of airports are laid down by ICAO on the basis of the required safety distances and obstacle free zones. The separation between the centre lines of parallel taxiways, for instance, must provide a minimum wingtip clearance of 15m between any two simultaneously taxiing aircraft. So at most airports around the world, the standard applied is one aligned to the 747, with its 65m wing span. This ICAO Code E Standard, as it is called, lays down a taxiway separation (STT) of 80m (see Diagram 1). But the A380 has a wingspan 79.8m, so the same taxiway separation would give a clearance of just 0.20m. So to comply with the safety requirements of the Code E Standard, an airport would have to carry out airfield redesign measures to ensure a taxiway centre line separation of at least STT=95m. This example shows that in many places, airport systems will require conversion and expansion. However, the scope for this is not always available.
Frequently, the space between the runway axes and the adjacent terminal has already been exhausted. About 60% of the airports in the Air Transport Action Group already see their apron space constraints as representing their main capacity problem. This applies especially to airports in the US and Europe, but to a certain extent also to some airports in Asia.
To be able to accommodate the A380, airport managers have various sets of instruments at their disposal. Firstly they may undertake airfield design changes, such as relocating taxiways or runways or aircraft positions; secondly they may consider a significant reduction in their safety standards; or thirdly they may choose to limit their operations to just a few A380 aircraft movements per hour.
Adapting an airport’s infrastructure to the requirements of the A380 necessitates applying concepts based on these three sets of instruments in every part of the airport and examining all the implications closely. For instance, if redesign measures are possible, will they require planning approval? If they do, a long period for obtaining this may have to be planned in.
If design changes are impossible, the only way forward that avoids compromising safety is to harness technological solutions. Airbus, for instance, has equipped the cockpit of the A380 with auxiliary systems which guarantee the aircraft’s directional accuracy and at the same time inform the pilot about critical taxiway system areas. The aircraft would then move on electronic rails, as it were, with just the minimum of deviation from the taxiway centre line. This would then provide justification for lowering the clearance requirements.
Something else airports can do is to adopt interventional strategies, responding on a case-by-case basis as the operating situation requires. Among the tried-and-tested measures, applied for instance when the 747 or the AN124 were introduced, is the use of special taxiway routings, closing off adjacent positions, reducing the safety requirements on the basis of an aeronautical study, the avoidance of having two A380s on parallel taxiways at the same time, setting up special handling positions by lowering the maximum permissible aircraft size on adjacent positions and/or utilising separate positions at the ends of the terminal pier.
Various research initiatives are currently examining the extent to which existing safety standards can reasonably be reduced. The aviation authorities of Germany, the UK, France and the Netherlands, working within the framework of the Airbus Airport Compatibility Group, have agreed on modified safety requirements less stringent than those currently set down by ICAO and have submitted these to the Air Navigation Committee of ICAO for approval. Some airports are planning to accommodate the A380 by applying for operational waivers to the present safety rules. In such cases, the managers concerned frequently refer to the successful use of this approach in the past at a number of airports in various places around the world.
Every airport planner has to decide what mix of measures from amongst those mentioned above will be best for his particular location; that is, what combination will ensure efficient aviation operations in the future while minimising the likely investment requirement. Ultimately, the focus will be not just on accommodating the A380 operations but on increasing the overall efficiency of an airport as a system.
Beyond the runways
In addition to the runway-taxiway system, the A380 makes new demands on aircraft servicing. This will involve the substantial redesign or re-arrangement of existing positions, such as the passenger bridge systems, the guidance systems, the electrical supply systems, air-conditioning and fuel supply systems. Servicing vehicles will also have to be adapted to the requirements of the A380. Airbus plans to facilitate access to the upper deck via the main deck and the use of internal interconnection systems. But it will still only be possible to achieve turnaround times comparable with those of the 747 if both decks can be serviced in parallel. That is essential to enable the A380 to be supplied with meals and beverages quickly enough. But that will require new servicing vehicles and passenger bridges; after all, the upper deck has a height of about 8m. With these measures in place, servicing times of under 90 minutes can be achieved.
Ultimately, the airlines will base their purchasing decision not just on minimum turnaround times but also on the dependability of servicing, because that is what provides assured efficiency; after all, only aircraft that fly punctually earn money. From this angle, too, direct servicing of the upper deck is preferable, since this gives a greater level of redundant options and thus greater dependability. It will also be necessary to adapt the terminal buildings to the growing passenger flows. Here, special consideration will have to be given to the gate hold rooms and the baggage belts, since these – unlike the centrally located terminal elements that serve passengers from a number of different flights – are particularly affected by A380 operations.
The decision to invest
Airports which do not anticipate regular A380 flights will initially forego any sizable investment programmes. One A380 flight a day, for instance, will certainly not justify the expense of redesigning, extending and upgrading the efficiency of an airport’s aircraft movement areas. If this was done, the aircraft movement areas of the airports of North America would just by themselves require an aggregate investment of more than $1.5 billion – equivalent to the list price of five A380s. Forecasts by Boeing and Airbus indicate that passenger numbers will double by 2025. This means that even if the A380 is left out of consideration, airports will nevertheless have to expand significantly the capacities of their terminals, apron areas and possibly runways as well. This leads to the assumption that the investment volume required for the expansion of airport infrastructure in the next two decades – on the basis of typical planning figures – will be more than $200 billion.
If they do undertake expansion on this scale, airports will then be able to dimension their new terminals and aircraft movement areas, and create sufficient parking areas, to accommodate A380 flights right from the start.
Where new facilities are being planned or constructed, one immediate focus is on being able to integrate the A380. Examples are Terminal 5 at London Heathrow, Terminal 2 in Frankfurt and the extensions being carried out at the airports of Singapore, Sydney and Los Angeles. The same naturally applies to new airports, such as Berlin Brandenburg International and the new airport in Bangkok. As a result, airport operating costs per passenger for the A380 will, in many cases, be lower than those for the 747. At the same time, adapting to the A380 will give airports that have already exhausted their runway capacity opportunities for significant growth and additional revenues. With its almost 600 seats per takeoff and landing, the A380 offers considerably higher slot productivity than is the case with the 747, with its 400 seats.
In the ideal case, a higher slot productivity permits airports which cannot extend their operating capacity without building new runways to go on growing anyway and handle additional passengers. In addition, with its favourable operating costs per seat, the A380 guarantees competitive ticket prices and thus stimulates further growth at that location.
Airports with no reserves of space, and which already have problems handling the 747 will only be able to integrate the A380 by making major efforts. This applies especially to some of the older airports in North America where some safety standards – such as the runway-taxiway separations – are already considerably below the ICAO standards. So there are natural limits to any further reduction of the minimum clearance requirements to cope with the A380, and in each individual case, this will require special approval by the regulatory bodies.
One thing is evident: if the Federal Aviation Administration refuses to allow airports to reduce their safety standards or if airports themselves are not prepared to undertake any wide ranging (and expensive) conversion measures, the A380 will lack a large number of important landing points in the US. Airlines operating trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific flights would then no longer be able to include all important US destinations in their route network. And this in turn would mean that the European aviation industry could lose an important piece of the market for the A380.
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