Bryan Lloyd

Burke Performance Comparisons (Tables)

My goal was to establish various comparisons in order to measure the performance of the Burke Lakefront Airport against other arguably comparable airports, specifically Ohio relievers, Ohio General Aviation, Regional relievers and relievers around airports (like Hopkins) that are responsible for controlling national airspace. The following is a discussion of the contents and calculations of the tables.

The 'State', 'Local ID', 'City', 'Airport' and 'Current Role' fields are simply descriptive of the location, purpose and identity of the airports, and so are not included in the comparisons between them. The 'Based Aircraft' field reports the total number of aircraft that are housed at the facility; this total includes military aircraft as well as ultra-lights, gliders and other minor aircraft. The '2001-2005 Dev Cost' field is, presumably, some amount of development money to be invested at each airport; these data are included in the later calculations, but I haven't learned their significance. These data items are drawn from the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), which identifies airports that are "significant to national air transportation," and which is current through August 2002.

The 'Single Engine', 'Multiple Engine' and 'Jet Aircraft' fields contain the numbers of those respective types of aircraft based at each airport. The 'Hel' field shows the number of helicopters at each facility. The 'Ops/Day" field reports the average number of flight operations (take-offs and landings) occur at each facility each day. The '% Non-local GA', '% Local GA', '% Air Taxi', '% Military' and 'Commercial' fields contain the percentage of those types of air traffic at the facilities; commercial, in this case, refers to commercial airline service rather than to business flights with commercial purposes. The 'Runway Name' fields contain the actual runway identification as used by the facilities and pilots. The 'L' and 'W' fields report the length and width of the runways in feet. The 'SW(000)', 'DW(000)', 'DT(000)' and 'DDT(000)' fields indicate the aircraft weight limit, in thousands of pounds, by single wheel, double wheel, double tandem, and dual double tandem landing-gear type respectively. All of these data were extracted from the AirNav website that provides airport facilities information to pilots.

Having described the contents of the cells, I should comment on the contents of the tables more generally. Tables 1, 2, 3 and 4 are comparisons of Burke, as it currently is, with an assortment of different classifications of comparable airports. Tables 1.2, 2.2, 3.2 and 4.2 are comparisons of the future facilities at Burke (as defined by the GIS team) with the same sets of airports as in the primary tables. In the x.2 tables, all information about flight volume and runway weight tolerances has been omitted. With respect to the weight tolerances, it is assumed that the newly built runways at Burke will be constructed so as to accommodate the largest aircraft that their lengths will allow. Furthermore, it is unclear what impact improved runways will have on the volume of flight activity, accordingly, no assumptions were made.

At the bottom all of the tables there is a set of averages (AVG) and proportions (PRO). The first average is the simply the arithmetic mean of all of the cells in the field, including zero values; the first proportion is calculated by dividing the values reported at Burke by the first average. The second average is the arithmetic mean of the only the non-zero values reported in a field, which provides a comparison among only the facilities offering a given service; the second proportion is calculated by dividing the values reported at Burke by the second average. The third average is the arithmetic mean of all non-zero values, excluding the airports whose facilities are not comparable (defined as having 3 or more paved runways); it follows, then, that the third proportion is the quotient of the values reported by Burke and the third average. The fourth average is the arithmetic mean of all non-zero values, excluding the airports whose flight traffic is not comparable (defined as having 350 or more flight operations daily); again, the fourth proportion is the quotient of the values reported by Burke and the fourth average. The fifth and final average is the arithmetic mean of all non-zero values, excluding the airports whose facilities and volume of air traffic have been deemed outliers. And the final proportion is, naturally, calculated as the values reported at Burke divided by the fifth average. In all cases, the averages are rounded to the nearest integer, the proportion figures that are greater than 1.0 indicate that Burke is performing better than average, and the proportion figures that are less than 1.0 suggest that Burke's performance is below the average.

Obviously, there are many different comparisons in the following tables. These are available to enable the user to determine which data is most relevant to his or her purposes. The resources used to compile these tables are: www.AirNav.com and http://www1.faa.gov/arp/planning/npias/npias2001/appenda/NPIAS01A.pdf.