Arlington Municipal Airport Development Plan Arlington Airport Development Plan | Page 90
PEAKING CHARACTERISTICS
Many airport facility needs are related to the levels of activity during peak periods (busy times). The
periods used in developing facility requirements for this study are as follows:
Peak Month – The calendar month when peak aircraft operations occur.
Design Day – The average day in the peak month. This indicator is derived by dividing the peak
month operations by the number of days in the month.
Busy Day – The busy day of a typical week in the peak month.
Design Hour – The peak hour within the design day.
The peak month is an absolute peak within a given year. All other peak periods will be exceeded at
various times during the year. However, they do represent reasonable planning standards that can be
applied without overbuilding or being too restrictive. The peak periods forecast has been determined
utilizing operations reports by the Arlington Municipal Airport ATCT to the FAA.
Since 2007, the peak month average has accounted for 10.1 percent of the annual operations. The
design day operations were calculated by dividing the peak month by the number of days in a month
(30).
Daily operational counts from the ATCT were utilized to determine a busy day peaking factor for gen‐
eral aviation activity. The peak day of each week has historically averaged 20 percent of weekly opera‐
tions. Thus, to determine the typical busy day, the design day is multiplied by 1.4, which represents 20
percent of the days in a week (7 x 0.20). Design hour operations were determined to be approximately
15 percent of the design day operations. The peaking characteristics are summarized in Table 2V for
each planning year period.
TABLE 2V
Peak Operations Forecast
Arlington Municipal Airport
Base Year
Peak Month
7,539
Design Day
251
Busy Day
352
Design Hour
38
Source: ATCT records; Coffman Associates analysis
Chapter Two - 35
2019
8,187
273
382
41
2024
8,887
296
415
44