Aircraft Rerouting due to Abrupt Facility Outages

Abstract

Abrupt airport outages resulting from terrorism, natural disasters, and incidents can cause reroutes and fuel-critical situations for flights. Although aircraft carry reserve fuel for holding and diversions, poor situational awareness and incomplete information about conditions may cause disordered reroutes. In this paper a deterministic routing model for airport outages that assigns flights an arrival time at a diversion airport is developed. The model includes a parameter for decision time, allowing one to investigate the value of faster response with advanced technologies. The model minimizes flight time after the disaster to ensure that flights avoid fuel emergencies. Model formulations include an unconstrained allocation of flights to diversion airports and a constrained allocation of flights according to routing rules; this formulation is suboptimal but provides a powerful tool because of its potential ease of implementation. The models are used to determine how coordinated traffic flow management actions could have diverted flights and reduced fuel-critical situations immediately following the destructive 2011 Tωhoku earthquake. It is found that under reasonable assumptions about diversion airports and capacities, all flights can be accommodated without reaching a fuel-critical state for a decision occurring 20 min after the disaster. A longer diversion decision-making process results in some flights reaching emergency conditions, requiring the use of other, less preferred diversion airports and expedited handling procedures. The more constrained model requires faster response for full accommodation of flights.