A Collaborative Optimization Method of Flight Slots Considering Fairness Among Airports

Abstract

With the rapid development of civil aviation transportation, an increasing number of airport groups are formed. However, the existing literature on fairness mostly focuses on the fairness among airlines. There is no research on the realization of scheduling fairness among airports with overlapping resources in the airport group. The goal of this paper is to comprehensively consider efficiency and fairness in slot scheduling, where fairness should include both interairline and interairport fairness. Subsequently, we developed a collaborative optimization model for airport group that takes into account the above three objectives and then uses the ε-constraint method to solve it. In addition to considering the basic operational constraints of the airport, the model also sets different adjustment boundaries to achieve the scheduling priorities specified by IATA. Applying the model to the Yangtze River Delta airport group, the results show that improved flight schedules can significantly reduce flight congestion, and a relatively fair scheduling result can be obtained by weighing airlines’ fairness and airports’ fairness. The model can improve the transparency of slot scheduling decisions and can be used as an auxiliary tool to help make slot scheduling decisions.