Causal simulation models for facing third millennium air transport sustainability

Aeronautics and air transport is a vital sector of our society and economy. Air transport logistics is one of the key players to support efficient globalization; however, sustainable mobility is at stake, due to facts such as the interdependencies with the financial system, climate change and an increasing scarcity of resources. This paper highlights the consequences of a lack of a proper understanding of air-side and land-side, leading to an unsustainable air transport system. A system approach for knowledge sharing between air traffic controllers, handling operators, airlines and airport managers is justified by means of causal models to design a mitigation mechanism to tackle perturbations instead of increasing the latent capacity. The simulation benefits to design indicators of sustainability are also mentioned. © 2013 The Society for Modeling and Simulation International.