With limited gate resources, airport traffic constraints, and dynamic flight schedules, it can be challenging to manage gate availability. When confronting this challenge, more and more airports have switched to a Gate Management System (GMS) as a way to manage their Gate and Aircraft Parking assignment process.
GMS offers an intuitive solution for allocating gates according to flight schedules and arrival times. Not only does the GMS reduce the complexity of managing aircraft parking and gate assignments, but it also detects potential issues, in real-time, by monitoring aircraft scheduling and resource allocation to find conflicts and report discrepancies.
GMS also helps to enhance communication between airports and airlines regarding changed gate assignments as well as alerting of erroneous gate assignment discrepancies. GMS solutions offer automatic alerting capabilities which eliminate back and forth email/phone communication for automated alerts that send in various ways.
By using airlines’ flight schedules to assign equipment and parking space for aircraft effectively, the GMS also automizes the gate assignment process. Using an algorithm to automatically calculate the gates to be scheduled for an aircraft based on size and type of aircraft, the GMS correctly assigns boarding gates and manages gate assignments. Since all flight schedules upload into an airport’s GMS, historical information regarding gate assignments is captured to provide insightful information such as airline gate usage, etc.
With a GMS Airports can significantly increase their operational efficiencies and enhance communication between stakeholders. But more than streamlining the gate assignment process, airports can also improve their passengers’ travel experience and provide airlines with cost savings by minimizing the time aircraft spend taxiing on the runway. As airports are seeing all the benefits of having a GMS, it is becoming more and more a necessary tool needed for the modern day airport.