Congestion pricing and environmental cost at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport

Abstract

To solve the problems related to resource constraints during peak periods—especially flight delays—congestion pricing, which is an important demand management tool, is proposed to ease airport congestion. A steady-state congestion model that includes the costs of airlines, passengers and the environment is established to calculate congestion fees for different times of day and different queue lengths. For the atomistic airline market, airline congestion fees are approximately 5000RMB to 10,000RMB during off-peak time. However, during peak time, congestion fees exceed 10,000RMB and can even reach 35,000RMB. These results show that airport congestion pricing can motivate airlines to move certain flights from the peak period and can slightly alter the scheduled departure times of other flights to avoid the rush of departures that occur on the hour at busy airports, thereby reducing the cost of delays caused by congestion. Moreover, congestion pricing that includes environmental cost has been shown to contribute to energy conservation and emissions reduction.