Journal Article

Computer Vision-Based Airport Turnaround Monitoring Using YOLOv11, Multi-Object Tracking, and Motion-Based Passenger and Baggage Activity Detection

Suvittawat, Nutchanon, Soh, De Wen

2026

Overview

Airport turnaround is an important operational process that directly affects flight punctuality, airport capacity, and ground-handling efficiency. However, many turnaround activities are still monitored manually or through fragmented operational records, which can limit real-time visibility and delay identification. This study proposes a computer vision-based airport turnaround monitoring pipeline that integrates YOLOv11 object detection, Norfair multi-object tracking, and frame differencing-based motion analysis to extract key operational events from airport video footage. Publicly available turnaround footage from Shinshu Matsumoto Airport, Japan, was collected under different environmental conditions, including daytime, nighttime, rainy, after-rain, and transition lighting conditions. From selected videos, 1446 images were labeled into 11 airport turnaround object classes, including tow tug, aerobridge, airplane, baggage container, belt loader, belt loader roof, fuel line, fuel tanker, fuel tube, tractor, and window. The dataset was divided into training, validation, and testing sets using a 70:20:10 ratio. The trained YOLOv11 model achieved strong detection performance, with overall test an precision of 0.9609, recall of 0.9445, and mAP50 of 0.9617. To support activity-level interpretation beyond object detection, the proposed pipeline applies frame differencing within specific regions of interest, including the aerobridge window region for passenger deboarding and boarding detection, and the belt loader roof region for baggage unloading and loading detection. The extracted object detections, motion spikes, and temporal logs are then converted into a Gantt chart that summarizes major turnaround activities, including airplane parking, deboarding, baggage unloading, refueling, baggage loading, boarding, and pushback. The results demonstrate that the proposed modified YOLO-based pipeline can transform ordinary airport video footage into structured operational timelines, supporting more transparent, data-driven, and automated monitoring of airport turnaround processes.

• Publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI),MDPI AG
• Subject: airport turnaround / computer vision / frame differencing / Norfair tracking / object detection / YOLOv11