Assessment of airport air side performability from the perspective of the consumer

Traditional approaches to assess the performability of airports ignore the needs of consumers in terms of the ability to move both passengers and cargo in a timely fashion, instead focusing on the airport as an economic entity. These approaches focus on the ability to generate throughput based upon the available assets at the airport. In this paper, we explore the ability to generate timely throughputs of flights based upon both the assets of the airport and the way those assets are used. We employ widely accepted data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure performability of the 45 largest airports in the United States using data spanning an eight-year period. The result of these models is a new aviation system diagnostic that identifies weaknesses throughout the entire national airspace to highlight specific areas for improvement and investment for reliable timely throughput. To illustrate the methodology, we present two case studies.