Modeling and control of airport queueing dynamics under severe flow restrictions

Author

Carr, Francis ; Evans, Antony ; Clarke, John-Paul ; Feron, Eric

Author_Institution

Int. Center for Air Transp., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

1314

Abstract

Based on field observations and interviews with controllers at Boston-Logan Airport and Newark Airport (EWR), we identify the closure of local departure fixes as the most severe class of airport departure restrictions. A set of simple queueing dynamics and "traffic rules" are developed to model departure traffic under such restrictions. The validity of the proposed model is tested via Monte Carlo simulation against 10 hours of actual operations data collected during a case-study at EWR on June 29, 2000. In general, the model successfully reproduces the aggregate departure congestion. An analysis of the average error over 40 simulation runs indicates that flow-rate restrictions also significantly impact departure traffic; work is underway to capture these effects. Several applications and "what-if" scenarios are discussed for future evaluation using the calibrated model.

Keywords

air traffic control; airports; dynamics; queueing theory; Boston-Logan Airport; Monte Carlo simulation; Newark Airport; aggregate departure congestion; airport queueing dynamics; departure traffic; severe flow restrictions; traffic rules; what-if scenarios; Aggregates; Air traffic control; Air transportation; Airports; Analytical models; Delay effects; Testing; Throughput; Traffic control; Uncertainty;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

American Control Conference, 2002. Proceedings of the 2002

ISSN

0743-1619

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7298-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ACC.2002.1023202

Filename

1023202