Capacity Management

Capacity Management

According to Slack et al. (1998), capacity of an operation is the maximum level of value-added activity over a period of time that the process can achieve under normal operating conditions. Capacity for airports is time based and therefore, once capacity underutilized due to planned and unplanned factors cannot be exploited in the future.

Capacity by Size

|Area |1227 Hectares |330 Hectares |

|No. of Airlines |90 |35 |

|Destinations served |179 |133 |

|Terminals |5 |2 |

|Runways |2 |2 |

|Length of Runway |1 |3,902m x 45m |2,605m x 46m |

| |2 |3,658m x 45m |1,315m x 30m |

|Car Parking |34,719 |12,800 |

Table 1

According to the Airports Council International (2009), Heathrow airport is the third largest airport in the world in terms of handling passenger’s while BIA doesn’t count in the top 100. Table 1 show that the gap between the two airports in terms of area, terminals and car parking is enormous. The area covered by Heathrow airport is almost 4 times of BIA. Additional 3 terminals provide Heathrow airport more luxury to handle air traffic movements, passengers and freights. The wide range of airlines helps Heathrow airport to serve 179 destinations in comparison to 133...