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Delta Air Lines Airport & Airspace Capacity Case Study

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Delta Air Lines Airport & Airspace Capacity Case Study The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is one of the largest airports in the world and is the main hub for Delta Air Lines, one of the largest airlines in the world. This case study will examine the relationship between demand and capacity for the home hub of Delta Air Lines. Future predictions for air travel estimate enormous growth rates as high as 50% by the year 2025. Airlines, airports, and the entire air-travel infrastructure will be challenged with the task of keeping up with this level of demand as we move towards the future. Today, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) is known to be one the busiest airports in the world. Over 250,000…show more content…
This data is also broken down by aircraft gate type which shows the increase in certain types of aircraft. The data shows a total of 33 new gates required by year 2031. New domestic gates comprise the majority of the increase (+24 gates). International gate increases (+9) make up the rest of the total. Large increases in widebody aircraft gates can be observed for both the domestic gate totals and international gate totals. This seems to correlate with the recent trends in widebody aircraft efficiency increases and respectively the future orders of such aircraft as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 XWB.

These predicted increases in demand have highlighted a situation where in the future, capacity will likely not be able to keep up with the demand and ATL will become deficient at maintaining throughput. In 2004 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had already began a Future Airport Capacity Task (FACT) study which examined airport capacity across the country. The study was meant to capture key airports within the U.S. that were predicted to have future capacity issues. In 2007 the FAA finished the updated second version of the study (FACT2) which outlined ATL as a key airport in need of future expansion. Studies have continued with FAA and the Atlanta state government
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