Optimum Geometries for Pier‐Type Airport Terminals

Abstract

A quantitative methodology to select a suitable terminal geometry for a pier‐type airport terminal is presented. Given the size of a terminal in terms of aircraft gates, the geometry that minimizes the passenger walking distance is obtained based on: the fraction of arriving‐departing and transferring (hub and nonhub) passengers; gate spacing; and spacing between piers. The passenger walking distance is considered as the selection criterion as it is the major level of service factor that is affected by the terminal geometry. A continuum approximation is used to model passenger walking within piers. Walking distances between piers is modeled using discrete methods. It is shown that the optimum geometry for a centralized‐radial pier configuration consists of a set of uniform pier lengths. For centralized parallel and semicentralized configurations it consists of a set of nonuniform pier lengths. The optimum number of piers is nearly proportional to the square root of the total number of gates. The probability distribution of the walking distance of a passenger can be generated by simulation. Several statistical parameters that are suitable to choose the best configuration, given the optimum geometry for each configuration, are reported.