Increasing Airports' On-Time Arrival Performance Through Airport Capacity and Efficiency Indicators

<p>To optimize the U.S. airports’ operational performance, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides various metric values (i.e., average gate arrival delays, the average number of daily aircraft operations, effective gate-to-gate times, and taxi-in and taxi-out times) attributed to NextGen programs. The U.S. airports are now expected of designing more efficient arrival and departure procedures as part of their NextGen capabilities. This study, therefore, examined the relationship between airport efficiency and capacity indicators, provided by the FAA as metric values, and the U.S. airports’ on-time arrival rates over the period from 2009 to 2017. To test the relationship and build a prediction model between the two factors, the study employed a correlational design and used a hierarchical regression analysis including four predictor variables partitioned to two sets. The hierarchical regression analysis yielded a statistically significant relationship between airport efficiency and capacity indicators and the U.S. airport’s on-time arrival rates. The findings indicated that approximately 44% of the variances in the U.S. airport’s on-time arrival rates were explained collectively by average daily capacity, effective gate-to-gate time, taxi-in time, and taxi-out time for the 9-year targeted period. Overall, this study stresses that the findings may contribute to the performance measurements in the airport context.</p>