Impacts of unplanned aircraft diversions on airport ground operations

When an unplanned disruption causes the temporary closure of an airport, incoming flights are re-routed to one (or more) nearby ones. As a consequence, traffic in the alternate airport increases and the efficiency, punctuality and regularity of operations may be compromised. The purpose of this work is to determine the impacts on the alternate airport airside operations due to the presence of diverted flights. If the number of aircraft to be serviced increases, ground handling operators are subjected to an additional workload, probably resulting in delayed departures and knock-on delays. A discrete-event simulation model of both aircraft landing-and-takeoff (LTO) cycles and turnaround operations is built by using AnyLogic. The model is applied to the case study of Lisbon "Humberto Delgado" airport. When the number of incoming flights increases upon a certain threshold, departure delays spread over the day, which should call for emergency actions and contingency plans.