# Performance-Based Airport Management PBAM is the feedback loop that makes [[Total Airport Management]] operational. Define what good looks like. Measure it. React when it drifts. Learn. The concept: airports define KPIs across all operational domains (airside, terminal, landside, commercial), set target thresholds in the Airport Operations Plan (AOP), monitor actuals against targets in real time, trigger collaborative interventions when thresholds are breached, and feed outcomes back into future planning. The shift from "managing operations" to "managing performance" sounds semantic. It's not. Most airports manage operations reactively: things happen, people respond. PBAM forces explicit objective-setting. What is the target on-time departure rate for this hour? What's the acceptable security queue time? What's the maximum taxi-out delay before we intervene? Without these targets, collaborative decision-making in the [[Airport Operations Centre]] has no shared objective function. Three time horizons of PBAM: **Pre-tactical (day before).** Set the AOP based on tomorrow's demand profile, expected weather, planned maintenance, airline schedules. Define target KPIs and threshold triggers. **Tactical (day of ops).** Monitor actuals against the AOP in real time. When a KPI breaches its threshold (taxi-out delay exceeding target, security queue growing beyond limit), the APOC triggers a coordinated response: reallocate stands, open additional security lanes, adjust departure sequences. **Post-ops (after the day).** Analyze what happened versus what was planned. Which interventions worked? Where did the AOP targets prove unrealistic? Feed this back into tomorrow's pre-tactical planning. The learning loop. The KPI layer is where most airports have the biggest gap. They collect data. They generate reports. But they don't close the loop between real-time KPI monitoring and real-time operational decisions. The gap between "we have a dashboard" and "the dashboard triggers action" is where PBAM lives. EUROCONTROL and ACI have been pushing PBAM as the framework for airport performance management since the Airport CDM Implementation Programme. It maps directly to the maturity model in [[Airport Operations MOC]]: Stage 4 requires PBAM to function. Related: [[Total Airport Management]], [[Airport Operations Centre]], [[Airport Operations MOC]], [[Airport Collaborative Decision Making]] --- Tags: #deeptech #systems #firstprinciple