The Virtual Institute "Airport Planning and Management" was founded by RWTH Aachen University and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in May 2004. Being approved and financed by the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF), the Virtual Institute consists of the following research institutions:

• Institute of Transport Science at RWTH Aachen University, including
  • Department of Airport and Air Transportation Research
  • Chair of Railway Engineering and Transport Economics
• DLR Air Transport and Airport Research in Cologne
• DLR-Institute of Flight Guidance in Braunschweig

Within the Virtual Institute "Airport Planning and Management", research activities aim to develop and verify capacity functions for airport runway systems. According to road traffic's Level of Service (LoS) concept, these capacity functions shall include both traffic volume and traffic quality criteria. While average speed is used as quality criterion within road traffic investigations primarily, waiting times (delays) can be considered as quality criteria for airport runway systems mainly.

After collection and processing of required data specifying aircraft movements and related structure characteristics, measures to increase capacity can be conceived and evaluated by the use of simulation tools. With capacity functions being created, adequate appliances for optimisation and performance improvement are made available to relevant parties involved (airports, air traffic control, airlines).

Analysis and reciprocal usage of air and rail traffic algorithms and methods to assess capacity is one of the Virtual Institute's major subtasks. This approach resulting from a synoptic investigation is promising due to both air traffic and rail traffic being traffic systems with scheduled operations: Strategic planning/scheduling phases (Air traffic: Slot allocation; rail traffic: Train path management) precede the day-to-day operations. Quality criteria depending on the utilisation of capacity are available for scheduling ("scheduled waiting time") and operations (" non-scheduled waiting time"). Thus the assessment of each process level requires the comparison with a specific Level of Service.