A Flight Delay Distribution Model for Traffic Flow Management

Abstract

This paper describes a flight specific sector-level Delay Distribution Model (DDM) that combines Bertsimas-Stock Patterson’s (BSP) dynamic, integer network-flow model with a set of airborne delay distribution constraints for NAS wide strategic Traffic Flow Management (TFM). The constraints defined by DDM are designed to ensure that assigned sector delays can be met by a set of feasible sector controller and airline preferred control actions. This allows the controller workload to remain balanced across sectors without a significant increase in the mean and variance of the workload. The Simplified Dynamic Density (SDD) metric, which is used in this effort as a measure of controller workload, is modified to include complexity of air traffic control actions associated with implementing the TFM computed delays. The initial study results also show that the DDM schedules airborne flight delays to sectors allowing farther downstream sector controllers to retain sufficient maneuverability slack to absorb further flight delays. This makes the DDM model suitable for managing uncertainties associated with downstream sector schedules in every TFM planning cycle. This research in DDM was motivated in part by research in the context of studying the convergence of the Dynamic Airspace Concept (DAC)-TFM interactions to an optimal set of flight routes, flight delays, and sector geometry and capacity configurations in an integrated DAC-TFM concept. DDM enables this convergence because assigned delays are achievable by simple control actions such as speed delay and path stretch.