DELAY EXCHANGES IN ARRIVAL SEQUENCING AND SCHEDULING

Gregory C. Carr, Heinz Erzberger, and Frank Neuman 


Abstract

Air traffic management (ATM) must often place restrictions on arriving flights transitioning 
from en route airspace to highly congested terminal airspace. The restriction of arrival 
traffic, or arrival flow management, is performed without regard for the relative priority 
which airlines may be placing on individual flights. The development of new arrival flow 
management techniques which consider priorities expressed by air carriers will in the 
future reduce the economic impact of ATM restrictions on the airlines and lead to 
increased airline economic efficiency by allowing airlines to have greater control over 
their individual arrival banks of aircraft. NASA is exploring the possibility of allowing 
airlines to express relative arrival priorities to ATM through the development of new 
sequencing and scheduling algorithms which take into account airline arrival preferences. 
This paper introduces the concept of "delay exchange," which is defined as a fair method 
of accommodating an airline request for an earlier arrival by advancing the landing time of 
one aircraft while simultaneously delaying another aircraft from the same airline. Fast-time 
simulation is used to evaluate the feasibility of scheduling these delay exchanges 
among individual arriving aircraft. Results show that the probability of successfully time-advancing 
an aircraft is highest for an algorithm which allows delay exchange between 
aircraft arriving at any feeder fix. Results also show that the success of this algorithm varies 
with airport acceptance rate,  indicating that the performance of this algorithm is a 
function of traffic density as well as the position of the aircraft within the traffic rush interval.