Introduction
Brisbane Airport, situated in South East Queensland is the third largest in Australia (on passenger numbers) and ranked 61 in the World. For the sixth year in a row Brisbane Airport was ranked by the ACCC as the best Australian Airport for overall quality of service, standard and availability of facilities. The airport consists of two terminals, domestic and international, two runways and is operational 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In the year 2009 the international terminal served approximately 4 million international passengers and 14.5 million domestic passengers. By 2015 the international terminal is predicted to host more than six million passengers.

Brisbane Airport is globally recognized as one of the best privatized airports in the world helping place Australian airports at the forefront of progressive airport planning and development.

Lelystad Airport is the biggest general aviation airport in the Netherlands. An expansion of the airport is planned which will allow budget airlines, holiday charters and regional airlines using narrow body aircrafts to operate from Lelystad. The expansion will include a longer runway and facilities to handle the bigger aircrafts and approximately 2 million passengers a year.

Incontrol developed a simulation model for this scenario of 2 million passengers a year. The model included all passenger related processes in the terminal building like check-in, security and baggage reclaim. Furthermore the model contained airside infrastructure like the runway, taxiway and ramps. The landside area with the car park and public transport were simulated as well.

Is today’s infrastructure sufficient to facilitate tomorrow’s flights? Is it possible to use the existing infrastructure in a more efficient way? These and more questions can be answered with the Gate Capacity Manager. The tool is not a day-to-day gate planning tool, but is used for analysis of current and future gate capacity.

The GCM has been developed in close cooperation with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The GCM supports in the decision making about the capacity of gates and remote aircraft positions (stands) and the use in daily operation. Decisions about extensions, adjustments and other use of stands can be supported at different levels:

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the largest European airport hubs. Currently, it handles over 48 million passengers annually of which about 40% is transferring. Within the airport infrastructure the baggage handling system is an important part. The system transports, screens and sorts the bags of all passengers. The available time is limited: all bags have to be ready 10-15 minutes before flights are departing. For the next years, the airport foresees a further increase in traffic. To accommodate this traffic, and to deal with new, more strict, EU baggage screening regulation, the baggage handling system needs to be expanded. The goal is to handle 70 million bags per year in 2018.