Integration of Ground, Airborne, and Linear Holding for a Cost-Efficient Network Air Traffic Flow Management

This paper presents a method to integrate a cost-based linear holding (LH) practice, with the commonly seen ground and airborne holding, for the network air traffic flow management (ATFM) problem. In this method, the performance of dynamic ATFM delay assignment can be improved in a more cost-efficient way. A brief comparison of the three holding manners is presented first, followed by illustrating one potential applicability of the proposed LH which inspires the motivation of this paper. Then, a network ATFM model is built based on the classic Bertsimas and Stock-Patterson model, with all the three types of holding accommodated. Under the model framework, a trajectory generation algorithm is introduced, aiming at computing, per flight, the realizable linear holding (i.e., LH time bound). This information is handled and shared by the different airlines and it is then used as a constraint factor in the network ATFM model. The dynamic delay assignment problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming and solved with a commercially-of-the-shelf solver. Computational experiments are given showing that the integration contributes to a notable cost reduction when network capacity changes ahead of schedule, if compared to the case where only ground and/or airborne holding apply.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AV060 Standing Committee on Airfield and Airspace Capacity and Delay.
• Authors:
  • Xu, Yan
  • Prats, Xavier
  • Yang, Lei
  • Zhang, Honghai
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Airport operations; Cost effectiveness; Flight delays; Flow control (Air traffic control); Ground traffic; Linear control systems; Network analysis (Planning)
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01658598
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05484
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 31 2018 10:47AM