AIRPORT LANDSIDE CAPACITY: A GROWING CONCERN

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) expects the annual number of passengers using the nation's 3,219 airports will increase more than 70% during the next l0 years, to 633 million in l996. This will place increasingly large and complex demands on these airports. The problems are greatest at small and medium-sized airports where deregulation of the airline industry has led to the formation of airline hub operations and a sudden increase in aircraft traffic. The FAA has, so far, had to operate without the help of commonly accepted measures and standards of landside capacity that can facilitate the difficult decision making involving airport investment and operations. This artilcle defines airport landside and discusses capacity measurement issues such as quality of service, tolerable crowding and delay, peak demand, means of capacity measurement, and the application of capacity assesment. It then describes a Transportation Research Board (TRB) study that will provide guidelines for assessing airport landside capacity, which take into account the varied and unique circumstances of each airport. The final report of the study which will be completed in 1987, will include three principal elements: a proposed set of level-of-service standards for designing capacity at specific airports, a review of available analysis tools for assessing capacity, and proposed guidelines for determining ranges of airport capacity.