Techniques for reallocating airport resources during adverse weather

The decreased airport arrival capacity during adverse weather conditions makes the pre-planned airline flight schedules unachievable, and necessitates the reallocation of arrival resources at the affected airport. This paper considers two different approaches based on market design to resolve the issue of airport landing resource reallocation. Several properties of these techniques are evaluated, including the nature of incentives for airlines to participate, report their true preferences, and the desire to minimize manipulation of the system. The first part of the paper analyzes the problem of slot trading without monetary payments, and presents sufficient conditions for the existence of stable allocations. The second part of the paper proposes the combination of optimization- based slot trading with a payment-based exchange scheme that ensures that the exchange (the FAA) does not operate at a deficit, while minimizing the extent by which airlines could manipulate the system by misrepresenting their preferences.