Domino goes door-to-door!
Written by Innaxis on . Posted in Domino.
AUTHOR: Damir Valput
As an attentive reader of this blog might already know, Domino’s main goal is to collect evidence on how various implementations of mechanisms such as 4D trajectory adjustments (including Dynamic Cost Indexing, DCI), Prioritisation of Flights (such as User Driven Prioritisation Process (UDPP)) and Flight Arrival Coordination using Extended Arrival Manager (E-AMAN), could impact the relationships between the elements of the ATM system. To obtain a fuller picture, Domino takes into account the passengers’ perspective in addition to the more traditional, flight-centred point of view.
While the focus of Domino lies primarily in the network effects that emerge from observing the gate-to-gate phase of air travel, the Domino team is also keen on understanding better the influence of the studied ATM mechanisms on the overall passenger experience. After all, in Domino we focus on the commercial air travel, and ignoring the passengers’ experience in this era of increasing desire for seamless travel experience could be costly (read more about it for example here).
Seamless travelling experience has become an ubiquitous phrase nowadays and it usually understands a travel experience with the absence of disruptions on the whole itinerary from point A to point B, personalised to the travelling needs of each passenger (group). It is a concept of growing importance, especially when placed in the context of the goals of the Flightpath2050 document, produced by The Advisory Council for Aviation Research and Innovation in Europe (ACARE). In it, they formulated, among other objectives, a very ambitious goal of 90% of the passengers, travelling inside Europe, executing their door-to-door travel in under 4 hours. On the Image 2 you can observe how time distributions for the total door-to-door travel time differ for two very diverse passenger groups: younger people and families. On average, younger people complete their whole door-to-door journey in 5 hours and 10 minutes, which is 46 minutes shorter than what it takes people who travel with their families. The graph is borrowed from the project Dataset2050, for more information click here!
Network effects (about which you can read more in the previous post on the network centrality metrics) can tell us only so much about passengers’ travel experience and how far away are we from the 4 hours door-to-door goal. Domino already incorporates passenger itineraries and will consider how elements in the system are linked among them and could have different degrees of relevance depending if flight-centred or passenger-centred metrics are considered. Flights can propagate reactionary delay through the network but passengers can miss connections too! However, In order to fully integrate the flight perspective and the passenger perspective, Domino will consider going door-to-door! In other words, Domino is going to implement a module that will model passengers’ needs and time processes during the door-to-gate and gate-to-door part of the trip as well.
Moreover, other actors in the ATM system (airports, airlines, etc.) could potentially benefit from seeing themselves through the eyes of a passenger and capturing phenomena that emerge from the complex interactions through this shift in perspective. Including the model of the passengers’ behaviour during their “out-of-plane experiences” could lead to observing new interesting effects in the air-travel network. How do mechanism studied in Domino influence passengers’ door-to-door times? How do the mechanisms affect the criticality of elements in the network from a passenger perspective. Is there any relationship between the time passengers spend on various airport processes and type of the airport characterised by the newly developed centrality metrics? Those are just some of the questions this extension of Domino could help us answer.
Are you interested in what Domino has to tell us about the convoluted relationship between passengers and the rest of ATM actors? Then stay tuned!