Case Study: Zürich Airport (ZRH) achieves increased runway capacity, improved on‑time performance and €1.9M annual savings with SITA's DMAN (AirportCentral)

Zürich Airport (ZRH) - Customer Case Study

Zürich Airport (ZRH) was operating near runway capacity and struggled with a first-come, first-served runway policy that made take-off times unpredictable, increased taxi times and fuel burn, and complicated recovery during disruptions. To address these constraints, Zürich Airport implemented SITA’s AirportCentral Departure Manager (DMAN) module as part of the SITA Airport Management Solution (AMS).

SITA’s DMAN uses real-time data, pushback planning, a constraints engine and a sequence optimizer to time pushbacks and optimize take-off sequencing. Since DMAN went live (May 2012) Zürich Airport saw taxi-out times fall by about 40 seconds per flight, ATFM slot adherence rise from 85% to 90%, take-off time accuracy improve from six minutes to 20 seconds (and predictability from 14.6s to 3.9s), and the ATFM Delay Share index drop from 1.1 to 0.85—delivering roughly 20,500 saved delay minutes, €1.9 million in charges saved, 1,150 kg fuel and 33.7 t CO2 reductions (and 190,000 minutes less taxi time). SITA’s solution therefore produced measurable operational, environmental and financial benefits.

Zürich Airport (ZRH)