Examining airline ground operation incidents by airport size

Abstract

Evaluating ground operations incidents is a critical step for airlines from both a management and safety perspective. Analysis of incidents is useful in both safety management and in planning for training and recurrent training of airline employees. De-identified data was provided by a major U.S. airline for all reported ground operations incidents from 2010-2017. This ex post facto research examined the rate of ground operations incidents by airport size for this airline, using both the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) classification and the airline's classification of airport size, based on its operations at each airport. NPIAS recognizes all commercial, reliever, and public airports in the national airport system, and the airports in this study were all classified as small/non-hub, or large/medium hub. The airline's size classification was based on its operations at a given airport and assigned airports as small, medium, large, or mega stations. The analysis of ground operations showed that the rate of incidents per operations did not differ with airport size for either the NPIAS size categories or the airline's size classification.