| dc.description.abstract | The terminal area surrounding an airport is an
important component of the air transportation system, and
efficient terminal-area schedules are essential for accommodating
the projected increase in air traffic demand. Aircraft
arrival schedules are subject to a variety of operational
constraints, such as minimum separation for safety, required
arrival time-windows, limited deviation from a first-come firstserved
sequence, and precedence constraints. There is also a
range of objectives associated with multiple stakeholders that
could be optimized in these schedules; the associated tradeoffs
are evaluated in this paper. A dynamic programming algorithm
for determining the minimum cost arrival schedule, given
aircraft-dependent delay costs, is presented. The proposed
approach makes it possible to determine various tradeoffs in
terminal-area operations. A comparison of maximum throughput
and minimum average delay schedules shows that the
benefit from maximizing throughput could be at the expense of
an increase in average delay, and that minimizing delay is the
more advantageous of the two objectives in most cases. A
comprehensive analysis of the tradeoffs between throughput
and fuel costs and throughput and operating costs is conducted,
accounting for both the cost of delay (as reported by
the airlines) and the cost of speeding up when possible (from
models of aircraft performance). | en |
