16 Mar 2026
HawkSim Airport
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The Current Approach
The Solution
Airports currently use a range of complex analytical methods and airfield simulation, mixed with expert judgment to assess the impact of any demand or capacity change. They then apply arbitrary limits to protect the operation from delay spikes. The problem is that traditional simulation tools are slow and expensive, which means only a small number of change options can be evaluated.
Expert judgment and broad limits tend to be very conservative and prevent significant change or optimisation of the whole system.
HawkSim Airport
Utilises machine learning based models of key airport process to provide a holistic impact assessment of demand or capacity change.
• Check-In
• Security
• Immigration
• Runway
Individual models are trained on historical data to “learn” how delay profiles of specific processes respond to shifts in capacity or demand.
Profiles
Profiles are used to set the capacity features of an airport. Everything from the number of immigration lanes to the wake vortex separation values can be configured and adjusted. Demand is generated from the schedule, then adjusted to take into account real world factors such as cancellations and off-schedule flying.
Evaluation
An Evaluation uses an individual process model to generate delay curves for a baseline and a change case. Comparison of the two scenarios highlights the impact of demand or capacity change on either the specific process or the airport as a whole. The speed of the evaluation opens up the possibility of running thousands of scenarios.
Optimisation
Optimisation can then be used to search for the best combination of changes which maximises the goal (e.g. maximum passenger numbers) without breaking any constraints that have been set (e.g. runway holding delay not exceeding 10 minutes).
Major International Airport Case Study
Use Case 1 – HawkSim Airport has been used by a highly constrained major international airport in the UK to assess the impact of proposed schedule changes and optimise the future schedule to maximise movements whilst minimising delay.
Use Case 2 – Any changes to passenger throughput at peak times can cause unacceptable queues in busy terminals. HawkSim Airport is used to predict queuing times at check-in, immigration and security allowing fine-grained capacity changes to be planned.
Use Case 3 – Moving airlines between terminals is a costly and disruptive process. The change to passenger flows and aircraft movements can have significant impact on delays. HawkSim Airport is used to plan airline terminal moves and predict complex consequences to the overall airport throughput.