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Civil aviation has different challenges as well as opportunities for the significant improvement of aircraft production processes, airport design, passenger flow management, and airline marketing. In this blog post, we will talk about the efficient solutions that can be found for civil aviation with the use of simulation.

In this blog post, we take a look inside an AnyLogic air maintenance model and reveal how it works. The aim is to improve your skills in the development and analysis of models, to teach AnyLogic's advanced capabilities, and also to show how simulation modeling is applied in different areas of business.

Using the Airlines Fleet model as an example, we will look at how agent-based modeling helps to analyze and plan maintenance.

Just eighteen years from now, 7.8 billion passengers will be taking to the skies annually.

How best to increase passenger capacity at airports? Airport simulation is an important tool for testing, development, and operational management. Here we look at several real-world examples of simulation working for airports...

To increase profit, airlines seek to minimize turnaround time. Turnaround time is attributed to multiple factors, disembarkation, baggage unloading, refueling, cargo unloading, aircraft maintenance, cargo and baggage loading and passenger boarding. A group in the Science and Engineering Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia completed a project using AnyLogic software to investigate the turnaround time for aircraft passenger boarding using AnyLogic simulation software. The recently published paper studied seven common boarding strategies and two new suggested strategies to find the optimal boarding methods for a Boeing 777 and Airbus 380. They considered behavior of groups traveling together, and individuals storing luggage as part of the simulation model.

To continue on the topic of pedestrian modeling: recently, I heard the news that the new terminal being built in the St. Petersburg airport will be tested using a free labor force, or in other words, volunteers. Actually, the volunteers will test the terminal’s operations and on-ground facilities by acting like passengers. It was interesting to find that the London Heathrow and Dubai airports are using this practice right now too. Here in St. Pete, they gathered more than 5,000 volunteers, to come to the terminal and walk around, jostle to check-in desks, race up the down-moving escalators, get bored in queues to passport controls, etc. I suspect that the volunteers will be watched by engineers, who will be counting the number of injuries per minute. That’s how airport authorities are going to see if everything is OK with the terminal.

Planning a huge airport terminal is a task that requires simulation modeling to complete the project successfully. A forum where airport planners gather is the ideal place to demonstrate the powerful alliance of the three simulation methods of AnyLogic software in action. The 2013 Passenger Terminal Expo, the leading airport passenger terminal exhibition, took place in Geneva from April 9-11. This year’s exposition was recognized as the most successful one in its 19 year history. The event united more than 180 exhibitors with more than 3500 professionals. The visitors included company CEOs, architects, airport engineers, airline representatives, and many other professionals connected to the airport industry.