The flow management problem in air traffic control

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:35832

Bertsimas, D

In both the United States and Europe, demand for airport use has been increasing quite rapidly during recent years, while airport capacity has been more or less stagnating. Acute congestion in many major airports has been the result. For U.S. airlines, the total yearly delay costs due to congestion are estimated to be of the order of $2 billion or more, while the total losses of all U.S. airlines amounted to about $2 billion in 1991 and $2.5 billion in 1990. European airlines are in a similar plight. Optimally controlling the flow of aircraft either by adjusting their release times in the network (groundholding) or their speed once they are airborne is a cost effective method to reduce the impact of congestion in the air traffic system. We present several models and algorithms to optimally manage the flow of aircraft and report computational results that solve realistic size problems involving thousands of flights within seconds.

• OSTI ID: 35832
• Report Number(s): CONF-9408161--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
AIR TRANSPORT
ALGORITHMS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
OPTIMIZATION
TRAFFIC CONTROL