Arrival Flight Scheduling through Departure Delays and Reroutes

Abstract

This paper presents a linear integer programming model for assigning departure delays and pre-departure reroutes to flights under airspace capacity restrictions. Experiments are performed in which the model is applied to control air traffic arriving at Chicago O’Hare International Airport over its eastern arrival fixes. The Federal Aviation Administration places miles-in-trail (MIT) restrictions at these fixes due to high traffic demand even on those days when there is no convective weather in the vicinity of the airport. Experimental results indicate that when the optimization model is applied to assign departure delays without any rerouting, total delays could be reduced by about 46–81% compared with those under current-day operations, i.e., passing back the MIT restrictions to adjacent Centers. It is illustrated that the solutions from the optimization model can be used to back-calculate the necessary MIT restrictions at the Center boundaries. This paper also uses the optimization model to analyze the effect of an increase in traffic demand on delays. Pre-departure rerouting is allowed along with assignment of departure delays to flights. Although rerouting is associated with additional flight times and costs, it provides flexibility to avoid congested airspace, and could be effective in reducing excessive departure delays. Sensitivity analysis suggests that if traffic demand increases significantly, allowing pre-departure rerouting along with departure delays could reduce total delay costs by 20–60% compared with those without any rerouting options.