Optimizing airport capacity utilization in air traffic flow management subject to constraints at arrival and departure fixes

This paper formulates a new approach for improvement of air traffic flow management at airports, which leads to more efficient utilization of existing airport capacity to alleviate the consequences of congestion. A new model is presented, which first considers the runways and arrival and departure fixes jointly as a single system resource, and second considers arrivals and departures simultaneously as two interdependent processes. The model takes into account the interaction between runway capacity and capacities of fixes to optimize the traffic flow through the airport system. The effects are achieved by dynamic time-dependent allocation of airport capacity and flows between arrivals and departures coordinated with the operational constraints at runways and arrival and departure fixes as well as with dynamics of traffic demand and weather. Numerical examples illustrate the potential benefits of the approach.