Passenger-Centric Ground Holding : including connections in ground delay program decisions

This research seeks to address potential "passenger-centric" modifications to the way that ground holding delays are allocated in Ground Delay Programs. The allocation of landing slots to arriving flights during time periods when the overall capacity at an airport is reduced due to adverse weather conditions or other circumstances is a well-studied problem in Air Traffic Flow Management, but not from the passenger's perspective. We propose a Passenger-Centric Ground Holding (PCGH) model, which considers both the number of passengers on flights and, notably, when/if they are making connections. In experimental results, PCGH is shown to lead to slot allocations which are significantly different from those in the currently-used first scheduled, first served (FSFS) approach. A systematic analysis is conducted to determine the impact of PCGH on a variety of airport and airline types. Finally, the effects of a maximum-delay-limiting constraint and the convexity of the cost function are investigated.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Soldner, Mallory Jo

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Amedeo R. Odoni.

• Operations Research Center.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/52804

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/52804