Impact of ground delay program rationing rules on passenger and airline equity

The discrepancy between the demand for arrival slots at an airport and the available arrival slots on a given day is resolved by the ground delay program (GDP). The current GDP rations the available arrival slots at the affected airport by scheduled arrival time of the flights with some adjustments to balance the equity between airlines. Current rationing rules do not take into account passenger flow efficiency in the rationing assignment tradeoff. This paper examines the tradeoff between flight delays and passenger delays as well as airline equity and passenger equity in GDP slot allocation. A GDP rationing rule simulator (GDP-RRS) is developed to calculate efficiency and equity metrics for all stakeholders. A comparison of alternate GDP rationing rules identified that passenger delays can be significantly decreased with a slight increase in total flight delays. Compared to the traditional ration-by-schedule, ration-by-aircraft size (RBAc) decreased the total passenger delay by 10% with 0.4% increase in total flight delay, and Ration-by-Passengers (RBPax) decreased total passenger delay by 22% with only 1.1% increase in total flight delay. The disutility of implementing a GDP is minimized with ration-by-passengers (RBPax) when passengers as well as airlines are considered in the decision. the current scheme, Ration-by-Schedule (RBS), is preferred only when the system solely focus on airlines. The tradeoffs between airline and passenger equity, and the implications of these results are discussed.