Abstract

Everyday millions of litres of jet fuel are burnt during the aircraft’s on-ground taxiing operations, releasing tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Aircraft manufacturers and researchers believe that replacing the current aircraft taxiing operation with more efficient on-ground taxiing operations could meet future market requirements. Multiple factors such as safety, airport throughput, energy efficiency, air emissions, and total cost need to be considered when designing airport taxi operations. This research reports on the performance of utilizing electric tow-trucks during on-ground taxiing operations. It builds on previous studies to assess the impact of the initial investment of implementing these alternative taxi system on congestion, cost and carbon emission on the on-ground taxi operations. We developed a Discrete Event Simulation model to schedule electric powered tow-trucks to provide taxiing services to aircrafts. The simulation enables aircrafts to request an available tow-truck or use aircraft engines to perform taxiing operations. The performance measurements of the taxiing operations were based on total fuel consumption, emission, traffic delays and total cost of implementing the operational strategy. Montreal-Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport was selected as a case study. Based on the presented methodology, the result exhibits that utilizing electric-powered tow-trucks to perform all on-ground taxiing operations is the best practical solution to meet the future market requirements. The conducted investigation indicates that this approach provides both economic and environmental benefits to the aviation industry. Three extensive sets of numerical analysis have been conducted to provide better insights into the problem. In each part of these analysis, different determinant factors such as the total cost, fuel consumption, delay and emissions have been used to compare the obtained results of the proposed approach with the current situation at the airport. After analyzing the results, an environmentally friendly and economically efficient approach is offered.