AirSim
Airport Modeling and Simulation Tool
At PAI we understand the key challenges facing today’s airport passenger terminals include:
- Accommodating increased passenger demand within capital resource constraints
- Increasing passenger expectations, service and satisfaction while experiencing lower per passenger revenue
- Making the business case for technology insertion for improved processing of passengers and their baggage
- Accommodating existing and emergent regulatory and security requirements
- Optimizing flows associated with arriving and departing ground transportation facilities.
To assist airport planners and operators PAI has developed AirSim. AirSim is a generic airport simulation modeling and analysis tool that provides valuable insight to Airport Authorities, TSA, Airlines, FAA, in analyzing the current state of airport's key processing elements and their performance. The tool provides a scalable and customizable environment that allows decision makers to perform capacity studies and determine operational areas that are likely to impede additional passenger processing. AirSim is based on a discrete event simulation engine; it captures the dynamics nature and variability in airport processing elements. Common use cases for AirSim are:
- To analyze (quantitatively and using animation) the current state of the airport, e.g. capacity utilization, queue length, time waiting in the queues, space occupied by the queues, baggage claim status, etc.
- To determine the various bottlenecks that would impede the processing of additional passengers per time period (hour, day, year).
- To analyze airport operations and schedules, redesign ticketing and baggage scanning space, analyze and optimize security checkpoints, and optimize usage of existing and new facilities.
- To assess investment decisions such as the need to build a new terminal complex; open new security checkpoints; install new security check machines, etc.
- To Conduct What-if analysis, e.g. what if the MAP (million annual passenger) increased by certain %; what if the number of check points increased by one; what if airline X will install more e-ticketing machines;
PAI has successfully used AirSim to develop a comprehensive capacity-planning tool for the Orlando International Airport. The tool is currently used to determine how to make efficient use of available airport resources to facilitate passenger flow throughout the airport and to study the effects of changes such as the implementation of additional e-ticket machines and their effect on the ticket counter and security checkpoints' queue wait times.